


Book Three: Flame

by crowleyshouseplant



Series: Azula's Search [4]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Flashbacks, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-18
Updated: 2016-10-16
Packaged: 2018-08-09 12:10:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 76,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7801354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crowleyshouseplant/pseuds/crowleyshouseplant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In this final installment of Azula's Search, her journey continues in both the physical and spiritual worlds. Mai, Ty Lee, and Suki are forced to leave Azula behind when they hear news that the New Ozai Society has grown powerful and dangerous. They leave for the Fire Nation immediately, and Azula is left to uncover the mystery of her mother's disappearance alone. It does not take long for Firelord Zuko's enemies to reach out to her, and Azula finds herself at the crossroads of her destiny.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. That Beautiful Face

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the third and final installment of [Azula's Search](http://archiveofourown.org/series/449755). Read the first part here: [[click](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6624382/chapters/15158491)]

Azula woke alone, her body a part of the earth like it had grown there. Thick roots crisscrossed over her hands, her shoulders, her thighs, her ankles. Roots looped over her neck forced her face into the ground, and her mouth tasted of dirt. When she tried to swallow, to relieve her thirst, she felt something pushed through her mouth and down her throat. 

She wrenched herself free from the earth and its roots. Her mouth gaped open as she pulled herself from the root that had grown down her throat. It eased from her like a thick tongue, and she gagged as she slid it free from her esophagus, length after length of thick, ropey root.  

She rose, unsteadily, to her feet as she kept pulling it, hand over hand, from her until a thick bulb-like seed stuck in the soft, fleshy part of throat. Eyes squeezed shut, she tugged it free with one final pull.

The roots were piled around her feet and ankles. She made a disgusted noise as they began to move, slithering up her calves and around her knees. She kicked them away from her and scrambled onto a nearby rock. After a few minutes of searching, they slithered back into the mud, and then it was as if they had never been. Azula sagged against the rock, and desperately wished for water and for something good to eat.  

The air was dim, like her vision was going crosseyed, and she struggled to focus on the vague trees, and what looked to be a grey river winding through blurred distance. She rubbed her fists against her eyes and blinked rapidly, trying to clear the fuzz in her vision, but it didn’t work. 

Everything was blurred like heat shimmering in the distance. 

“Where am I?” she murmured. She glanced around for Mai, for Ty Lee, for Suki—for anybody.  

But they were gone, and she was alone. 

The rock shifted beneath her feet, transforming into a pool of water that caused her to fall with a splash on her back.  

She scrambled to her feet, cursing like she had sometimes heard her father’s soldiers swear when they had been unaware that she was near.   

How could she focus if her surroundings were so intangible?  Shaking her head in disgust, dripping water, she pushed her way forward until she found a monkey humming on a tree stump. Its eyes were closed, his hands poised in meditation.

“Mai? Ty Lee!” Azulla called out. Then, almost as an after though: “Suki?” 

The monkey opened one eye, then hummed more insistently. 

Azula stood very still for a moment, considering the monkey. No monkey she had ever known had acted this way—like they knew what she said, like they were displeased with the interruption of their peace and quiet.  

“Hey, dum-dum,” she said. 

The monkey’s eyes flashed open, wide and bright before he squeezed them shut again. 

“Am I in the spirit world?” It would be the only thing that would explain the intransience of this space, and the behavior of the monkey. Of course her uncle wouldn’t be around when she needed him. Rumor said he had visited this world after the death of his son. 

She took the monkey’s renewed attempts at meditation as confirmation. She tucked her chin against her palm and circled the monkey, considering it. He was small, smaller than her. “Who’s the strongest spirit in this place? I want to go home.” 

The monkey did not speak for a moment, but perhaps he knew that if he did not answer her, she would not leave him alone. He pointed to his left, and said, “Koh. Now leave me in peace.” 

She followed the way he pointed and walked quickly over the ground, lest it turn to mud beneath her feet or something worse. She stubbed her toe against a half-hidden stone and it hurt, which reminded her that a spirit had probably dragged her physical body here, which sounded very dangerous and very bad. 

Even if her Uncle was here to help, he probably would be useless for something like this. They said only his spirit had entered the spirit world—not his physical body.  

Occasionally she asked any wandering spirits where Koh was. They screamed in fear, pointed in the same direction the monkey had, and scurried away from her. She smiled at their trembling. This Koh must be very powerful indeed, and that’s what she needed in a strange place like this: power, since she had none of her own. 

She paused at a narrow ravine leaning over a cliff. Wind should have clutched at her hair, but the air was still, suffocating. A giant gnarled tree rose from the surface. A narrow trail lead to its cavernous trunk, and she knew that this barren, greenless place must be where Koh dwelt. 

Gathering her limbs, she coiled her muscles and jumped, rolling to the base of the hill. Her heart scudded against her ribcage, and another monkey, smaller than the one she had met earlier, jumped back from her. 

The monkey had no face. 

Odd, Azula thought as she picked her way into the heart of the tree. How did it breathe? How did it eat? Maybe it didn’t need to as a spirit.  

As she walked past, her hand snaked out and gripped it by the fur of its neck. It felt corporeal enough, it struggled hard enough.  

It writhed in her grasp, and she let it go, laughing. 

She descended deeper into the cave. The darkness was heavy against her shoulders, and it was hard to breathe. For the first time, a warm pant of air brushed her face, and she paused for a single moment before continuing on. “Koh?” she called out.  

Something skittered in the dark, and she turned, fast like the lightning that had once burnt from her fingers. She raised her hands, settling them in the familiar pose even though she still couldn’t bend.  

Behind her, a voice, deep and low like the sound of two sparkrocks grating together, whispered, “That won’t help you now.” 

She flung around, schooling her face so her aggressor would see no fear, no weakness. A baboon’s face stared back at her, attached to the body of a many legged, scuttling creature. 

Sweat dripped down the hollow of her back.  

“You don’t know that,” Azula said. “You don’t know anything about me.” 

The face shifted, and she peered into the face of a hardened warrior. His eyes flamed yellow. “I know who you are, Azula of the Fire Nation.” 

“And you are Koh,” she said. “I suppose we are evenly matched in our knowledge.” 

Koh’s face again morphed into a fish-creature, a small baby, a clown. 

For the first time, she began to wonder exactly why Koh was the most powerful spirit she had been directed towards. She thought of the monkey, and the first face Koh had shown to her. Her skin grew clammy, and she hid her hands behind her back so they would not shake and betray her.

“it’s been a long time since I’ve added the face of a child to my collection,” Koh whispered.  

“I am no child.” Azula clenched her fist against the flush of anger that heated her cheek. 

“But you are,” Koh said. “Barely two years older than the last child who entered my lair.” Koh chuckled to himself, twisting around her until Azula found herself coiled in his depths. His stolen face was very close to hers. “You are a bad liar.”  

“Show me the child’s face, that we might compare.” 

Koh turned one of his many faces away. “Alas, the child succeeded in escaping with his face still his own. You are familiar with him, of course. The young Avatar Aang.” 

Her heart skipped, and for a moment it was hard to breathe. “Did he defeat you in battle?” 

Again, his long, slow, blood-boiling chuckle erupted from the darkness. “No, but he came armed with something you do not. Knowledge.” 

“I know plenty,” Azula said, stepping neatly from Koh’s coiling body. 

“Then why are you here?” Koh peered at her with a man’s face—a split lip and a torn eye. 

She paced around him, her fingers ticking off her reasons. “To return to the corporeal world. I don’t know how I came here, much less how to return. And I need to find the girls who traveled with me. Mai, Ty Lee, and Suki.” 

A beady roach eye peered at her from a closeness that made Azula want to take several giant steps back, but she would not give him the satisfaction. “Why come to me?” 

“I asked for the most powerful spirit, and they told me to come to you.”  

He coiled around her again, and she was pinned against the wall. There was no place to step away. Her skin crawled as he wound up her legs. “And did you ask why I was the most powerful spirit?” 

“I'm rather in a hurry,” Azula said. “Either you are powerful to take us home, or you are not. I don't need to know the details, I just need you to make it happen.” 

Koh fell from her then as he crawled along the sides of his home. “Home? Is that truly your request?” He leaned towards her, his face that of a woman’s with painted brows and black lips. “Ask, and you shall receive. Aren't you tired of looking?”  

She stumbled back, her features hardening into stone at the foulness of his breath. “Don’t presume to know me.”  

“But you do seek, do you not, Azula of the Fire Nation?” A woman with long, brown hair melted into Koh’s new face. “Her name is Ursa, and you are her daughter, and she has been gone for many years. You miss her, don't you?” 

Azula’s hand clenched. 

“Who wouldn't miss a mother banished for such a long a time.” His face changed in another woman’s whose dark hair was shot with grey. Perhaps her mother's hair was greying too, assuming she still lived.   

Azula collapsed to her knees, the hard ground banging against the bone. If she waited long enough would Koh reveal Ursa’s face to her? Had she arrived too late? “You don’t scare me—“ but even her own voice stretched thin and taut and strained in her ears. She covered her mouth with her hands. 

“You weren’t close. You barely remember to call her mother. Do you truly even wish to find her? Why do you look so hard?” 

Azula remained silent and still. 

Another woman, her eyes soft and brown, peered down at her.  

Azula averted her gaze and remained silent and still. She could see the shadowy shape of Koh's legs circling her in the darkness.

“Do you want to hear her say that she loves you one last time?” 

“No,” Azula breathed. “No.” 

Coils fell around her, many legs walked up her body, grasping her shoulders, her neck, until the woman’s hair fell into her open mouth, catching on her dry and chapped lips. 

“Perhaps then,” Koh whispered with the woman’s face, “for the first time?”  

Azula hung limply in his arms. Her chest heaved as she struggled to breathe. Tears slid from her eyes. 

“There,” Koh breathed. “There.” His coils tightened around her, and she scrabbled at the cool scales of his skin. “And now you will know why they call me Koh the Face-Stealer.” 

Pain splintered her eyes from her skull. Electricity ripped her hair from the roots, and Azula shrieked in pain before the sound itself became silenced. She could not see, she could not hear, she could not speak.  

Darkness filled the pit of her body and overflowed into the shadows as Koh released his grip and she fell to her knees, her palms striking the ground and pain shuddering through her bones, resounding like bell tolls in her elbow. She would have cried but she could not.  

Trembling, she put her hand, grimy with muck, to her face and felt a smooth expanse of skin where her hair should be, her eyes, her nose, her mouth. 

She had no face. 

Unable to scream, she scrambled from the lair, trying to remember where she had come. Perhaps the stone shifted so that she might find her way because she left the terrible chill of Koh's lair and felt the wan warmth of the spirit world against her skin. The stone turned to grass and dirt and she collapsed against it, her hands covering her the smooth expanse of skin so that none could see what more she had lost. She sat there, trembling, until she realized she could not stay here. What if Koh left his lair? What if something else found her? 

Azula crawled through the dirt as her fingertips followed the stone and roots so she wouldn’t trip. Wet and mud dampened her knees.  

Her hands fell on something that wasn’t stone, that wasn’t earth. She paused, then tugged it from the dirt. It was something shaped by hands as she traced the bared grimace of frozen lips and teeth, the hollowed holes for two eyes, the ribbon worn grungy and thin. A mask with a face, which was exactly what she needed so that none would know that Koh had stolen hers. She knotted the ribbons against her skull. The mask was light against her skin, and she wondered if it was straight, if anyone would be fooled. She put the thought from her. She couldn't afford to think about that now, she only needed to stand and then to walk.

On shaking legs, she did. There was so much to fear, she realized, as she walked very slowly. She feared the stones that would trip her, the prowling spirits that could drag her deeper into the spirit world, and she feared that the others would leave her behind either because they would not wait for her or because there was no place for her in the physical world without a face.

She tried to remember how she had come here. She had been looking at the water, she had been thinking about diving into it, when she had been pulled into and had found herself here. Perhaps she could swim her way back to the physical world. 

If only she did not fear the water so much.

And, as if the spirit world could read her mind, her thoughts, her foot slipped against a slippery stone. The hard ground shifted to what felt like a rushing river, and it tugged her from her feet, and carried her away to a time when she had been a child. She had asked Li and Lo where Zuko was after the Agni-Kai with his father. The water spoke with their bitter voices. Didn’t she remember? He had been banished. Poor child.  

It was supposed to have been a threat to frighten Zuko, and he would have behaved. Why would her father go through all that trouble to save him from his grandfather, if he was only going to banish him later anyway?

The palace had been empty without him. She had not known that Zuko was gone because he had not stopped to say goodbye. The spirit water pulled at her clothes like the familiar fear that Uncle Iroh would make Zuko weak, a quitter just like him. That Zuko would never return because the Avatar was dead. She had imagined her brother an old man returning home when she was still young. It had disgusted and repulsed her and she had waited for his return.  

Her masked face slipped below the water. Panic rose in her, and her limbs thrashed until she became weary and still, bearing the weight of the water as she had born of the weight of being an only child in the absence of her brother.  

The water whispered with her father’s voice. “Do not disappoint me, Azula. You’re the only one left.”  

The water bore her on her back, sliding under the mask over the smooth panes her face had become. She was a little girl again, lying awake at night, wondering who would be the next to be banished. Would it be Li and Lo, or were they too old? Would he banish her friends, Mai and Ty Lee, if she failed him? 

Would he banish her?  

If he did, she would challenge him to an Agni-Kai and she would win because she wouldn’t cower as Zuko had.  

But then she had stood before her father. It was the day after the eclipse, the day after Zuko had left them again, betraying them fully after everything. She had wondered if her father would strike her then. She could take it like Zuko never could. But then he hadn’t. He’d only looked at her, and said that he had expected these failures and falsehoods from Zuko, but not from her. 

He had sent her away just like the river carried her away through the nights she had dreamed of fire, to the days when her bending was the only sure thing that had never left her until it finally had, just like her mother, her friends, her brother, her father. 

Anger cracked through her as she scrabbled to stop the flow of water that washed around her, that washed over her, but she could not. Her fingers clawed through the wet sandy bottom, and she dreamed of Zuko on the beach, the bonfire rising like a pillar with the force of his anger, the stab of grief somewhere deep in her heart that she was not the target of his rage. 

He felt nothing for her when he was constantly in her thoughts. 

If she had her eyes, she would have opened them as she screamed out her sob stories with the rest of them. 

For a panicked moment she thought the water had washed the mask from her, but she brought her hands to where her face should have been, clutched the smooth wood with her fingers, traced its twisted grimace with her fingertips. Her mother had called her a monster, and maybe she wasn’t wrong.  

So much had happened that night, and her mother had not said goodbye.  

Just like Mai had abandoned her, and Ty Lee had betrayed her. She had needed them and they were gone, because she had banished them, because she had made them choose. 

They made her weak. 

Even now they made her weak as she was swept along by this river, crying over their absence, pining for their presence.   

Her father had been no better. He was gone from her too, and once she would have blamed Zuko or the Avatar, but they had not forced his hand to send her away from him after her brother and to leave her behind.   

Zuko had been right about their father.  

It cut a hole in her through which the water flowed.  

She was alone, not just here, but for her whole life, she had been alone.  

But Zuko had sent her on this quest instead of leaving her in prison. Mai and Ty Lee had joined her. And even though it might not be the same, and it never would be the same, maybe that was okay. 

Maybe it was enough that she had failed in banishing them. Maybe it was enough that they return home and part their separate ways. 

Maybe it was enough that they had tried. 

The river ran dry, and Azula found herself on her knees in wet gravel and dirt. She rose to her feet and wandered slowly, following the path the Spirit World seemed to grow for her. She climbed a hill, and paused. 

She couldn’t see them. Couldn’t hear them. But she knew they were here. The Fire Nation girls, her hand-picked friends, her right and left hands. She went towards them, her feet stepping their way, carefully, through the long grass and the thick clumps of dirt.  

She checked to make sure the mask was still fastened securely to the smooth plane of skin that was all that remained to her. The knot was tied sure and fast. It was strange not to feel her long hair, to instead feel the hot kiss of the lazy breeze against her bare scalp.   

She hated it. Hated the vulnerability of it.   

Mai and Ty Lee must not see her like this. She should have gotten her face back before she found her way to them, but she knew she couldn’t do it by herself. With them, they possessed something that Koh, the Face Stealer, did not: a team. With them, she was not alone, and Koh was alone, despite his many faces. She wasn't sure if she could survive a second round with Koh--but maybe together they could.

After all, Mai was about as emotionally grey as a girl could get. Nobody would want her face. Except Zuko. And Koh did not seem to be the type of spirit to be fond of pink. 

Azula raised her hand in greeting towards them, and hoped she would still be able to do what needed to be done without her voice, without her face. 


	2. That Gloomy Girl Who Sighs A Lot

Mai stood in the middle of what appeared to be a swamp. Mud stuck to her robes, and her wide trousers stuck to her legs. “Gross,” she said. Craning her neck around, she looked for Ty Lee, for Suki, for Azula, but she stood alone in the wet muck stretching around her.  

She took a deep breath and began to walk. Water splashed around her at every step. 

If she ever returned to the physical world, Mai thought, she was never going to leave her home again. She would wake late, swathed in silks. The servants would bring her food, and she would eat from their hand.   

She would happily be bored for the rest of her life. 

She put her hand over her stomach. She wondered if it was possible to starve in the spirit world (for that was surely where they were) even if their physical bodies had been dragged there. She imagined Ty Lee laughing at her whenever she found her again. Who would have thought that Mai could ever find her way to the spirit world! She was the least spiritual person she knew--just look at her aura!

Mai stopped and sighed.

Still, her parents would find some reason as to why she should have returned sooner. You were with the Princess, you have should have stayed by her side, she’s so smart, she’s so clever, she’s so perfect, of course she'll find a way to get you out of this mess!

Like it wasn't Azula's fault she was in this mess to begin with. Mai spread her hands in front of her. Her fingers still ached from how hard she had held on to Azula when she thought she had been about to jump. Why had she done that? She didn't care what happened to Azula--except, she did.

Or else she wouldn't have held on.

She sighed, again, frustrated, and sat down on a stump.

The whole thing was ridiculous. Mai was being stupid about Azula. But when she had seen her, balancing on the wooden ledge, the water in driving sheets around her, her eyes lit up with fever and something else--Mai hadn't even thought. She had just grabbed, and then she had held on until the creature had taken them with her.

They never had a chance.

She hadn't held on for Azula's sake, Mai told herself. She had held on for Zuko's sake. She was his family, his only sister. She had promised to keep an eye on her when she had proposed she go with Azula in the first place.

Mai reviewed her thoughts, tangled and jumpy as they were from the adrenaline, from how fast everything had happened. She did not recall thinking of Zuko, only of Azula's eyes, her parted mouth, her open hands as the rope came fluttering loose. The way she had seen her muscles coil to jump. No, Zuko had not been on her mind. Just Azula. Just the belly-dropping realization that Azula was going to throw herself overboard, and for what. She hadn't even though, just reacted as quickly as she had once wielded her knives, as quickly as she had drawn them against Azula once what felt like a long time go.

Azula's hand had been wet, slippery.

Mai swallowed hard, and closed her eyes.

She jumped when Azula's voice slid through her. "You missed me, Mai. You couldn't bear to be without me. I'll always be with you, no matter how hard you push me away." 

Azula's hand was heavy on her shoulder. Mai could see the long nails digging into the worn threads of her robe. Leaning backwards, her gaze followed Azula's figure. She was in full Fire Nation Regalia. The Firelord's flame crested her top-knot. Her mouth was curved in a hard, low, smile. "You're not real," Mai said, dully. "You're not really her. You're just some spirit, trying to frighten me. You can try, but it won't work."

"I might as well be real. Do you think I could be here, if she wasn't here too?"

Mai didn't know the rules of the spirit world. She didn't know what could be and what could not be. Maybe this was just a mirage, a vision of Azula that would go away the closer she came. She stood up, stepped towards the vision. It remained still, smiling at her. She reached out with her hand pushed against Azula's chest, but she remained rigid, unmovable. 

"You can't get rid of something you brought with you unless you let it go. But you don't know how to let go. You build walls, you keep everything inside, locked up nice and tight--like you once were. Don't you ever get tired of being in some kind of prison? Especially, if it's one you made yourself? Then you'd have no one to blame--and you always need someone else to take the blame, don't you?" 

"I thought you were manifested from her physical presence, not my emotional baggage." Mai folded her arms. The damp from the swamp seemed to creep up her legs, and she wondered if she were sinking in the soft sand. 

The vision laughed just like Azula. "Do me a favor, gloomy girl. When you find Azula, ask her if she's lost something. I think that you will be very pleased with her reaction. At least I would. It's so funny. Even you might laugh."

Mai closed her eyes.  When she opened them, the spirit that had worn Azula's visage was gone.

Mai looked down at her robes. They were clean and dry. The swamp had disappeared, and there were only golden ridges crested with trees on the horizon. Mai strode forward with new determination. Azula could be so single-minded in her purpose, just as she was lost without it. But now that they were in the spirit world, their only purpose was to return to the spirit world so that they could see their families again.

Her parents were probably at their old estate in the Fire Nation. Along with the letter from Zuko she still kept hidden in her robes, she had received one from them, shortly after Zuko had recalled them from Omashu.  

They wanted to see her, or at least Mai imagined they did, but she had avoided their visit. They could wait until she returned with Azula. She already knew what they wanted. There was no need to discuss. They would ask her why she had not intervened with Zuko on her father's behalf. Didn't she know his removal as the governor of New Ozai nosedived his political career? Didn't she care about anyone but herself?

They would look at each other, they would be angry, they would tell her to sit quietly and to think about she had done, think about she had destroyed the prospects of their family, and how could she do this to her father, to Tom-Tom? 

Did she have no respect for her family?  

Mai yawned just thinking about it.  

Her family acted like they didn’t have their big estate. Sure it wasn’t as impressive as a governorship, but it wasn’t even like Omashu was Fire Nation. Not anymore, at least, especially after Zuko had ordered the withdrawal of the troops, and issued formal apologies and restitution to King Bumi. That would be another thing she’d have to hear about, how the coffers would soon be empty at this rate and how the Nation would be plunged into poverty, and she wouldn’t want that, would she, Mai? What would happen to them, Mai? Didn't she ever think about that?

Mai trudged on.  

She hadn’t seen Tom-Tom for a long time, not since she had left with Azula when she had been summoned. She only knew he was safe because of the letters from home. 

He must be getting big, since that’s what babies did. 

But he probably couldn’t talk to her, or he’d demand she play with him, and she wouldn’t know how to play with him.  

It wouldn't be safe to let him play with her knives—not that she had them anymore.   

And it wasn’t as if she could train him in their use either. He could barely stand on his own two feet, and his hands could barely hold a toy.

Maybe he could stay with her in the palace? That was even assuming she and Zuko would work out—which wasn’t even something she was sure about. She could already hear her mother say, well why aren't you sure, Mai? You need to be sure!

Mai only knew that she didn't hate him. That she cared about him. That she missed him dreadfully.

Azula was going to be the death of her. 

For the longest time, she had clung to the idea that Azula would never actually kill anyone. After Zuko had been banished, she had feared that Azula would imitate her father and do something similar to her or Ty Lee. Mai had been almost right--Azula had certainly threatened them more than usual, smiling when she did, like it was a game where she would always be the winner. But she never burned them, not like her father had done to Zuko. But then she had left Tom-Tom in the hands of the rebels, who could have been anybody who could have done anything. They were lucky it had been the Avatar and friends who had had him, and not someone else. And then she had tried to kill the Avatar, who had also been just a kid. 

She had been afraid that Azula would betray them in some way. But no. Mai did that first. She blinked her eyes against the sweat that fell into them. 

She kept forgetting that Azula had already betrayed them a long time ago, even if she hadn't really done anything. Even if she hadn't really hurt them. Even if she hadn't really tried to kill them.

She had been betraying them slowly like poison since she met them. Surrounding herself with them so she’d always have someone to push down. So she’d always have someone to target practice.  

Once more, Mai stopped and looked around. She needed to get out of here. She needed to go home.

It was supposed to have been different now that Azula didn’t have her bending, but it was still the same. 

Mai walked until she slid down a small hill and found herself on the banks of a river. It flowed quickly, and she could not tell how deep it was. There was no bridge, and she could not afford to wander around and around until she was able to find one or a shallow place to cross. 

She remembered the last time she’d been on a river bank, though at least Ty Lee had been with her then. She remembered how Azula had stood over them, her hand curled against the bone of her hip. They had been pursuing the Avatar and his friends, following the trail of the sky bison fur. They had split up, separated, so that Azula followed the avatar, and they his friends. “Don’t worry,” Azula had said. “I found the Avatar, and then his two friends found me. Excellent job, you two, in following them like I asked of you. If you had stopped them, I would have succeeded in my mission.” 

They hadn’t been expecting the bison to fight as it had. How were they supposed to fight against an airbending bison with a massive tail?   

She paced around them, hands folded in the small of her back. Mai remembered how cold she had been from the river, but Azula would not let them rise, and she would not build a fire. “Let me tell you a story. First, I came upon the Avatar. He was waiting for me, but he didn’t recognize me. He had no idea who I was.”  

Like he hadn’t been frozen in ice for a hundred years. 

“Then Zuzu decided to join us, and I had to fight them both.” She threw her head back as she laughed. “Like it was hard. My brother, the firebender oaf.” She swung around on them, the laughter gone. “Don’t worry, of course. I handled them easily. I had the Avatar trapped, encircled in a ring of fire when the water tribe peasants came. The ones you were supposed to be tracking and taking care of.”  

Ty Lee tucked herself into a closer bow. “We’re sorry, Princess Azula. We defeated them, easily, but the bison—“  

Azula raised her hand, and Ty Lee stopped her babbling. 

“They were without the blind earthbender. She only arrived later. But she came with Uncle Iroh, who stood side by side with Zuko as he always does. Can you count, Mai, how many were against me?” 

“Six,” Mai had said.  

Azula leaned over them, her shadow across their bent backs. “Where were you? Why are you still sitting on this river bank instead of making your way back to me? Your presence could have turned the tide of battle in my favor. Instead, I find you wringing water from your hair. Did you want me to fail?”

"No, Princess Azula," they had assured her.  

But Mai had wondered how Zuko was. What he looked like now. If his scar had faded at all, if his hair was longer or shorter. It had been a long three years since she had seen him.   

“What are you going to do to us, Princess Azula?” Ty Lee had asked. 

Azula had turned to them. She drew a circle of lightning in the—it crackled, and they both stiffened as they saw it. But Azula aimed high over their heads, and the energy dissipated harmlessly. “I think my disappointment is punishment enough. But don't fail me again. I won't tolerate it.” She pulled Ty Lee up by her arms, and Mai rose after her, her stomach unclenching, nausea flooding her system until she thought she was going to be sick in the river. She didn’t know what would happen to a nonbender if they were shot through with her lightning. She didn’t want to find out.  

“The Avatar has nowhere to go, not really. There’s only one city that he can go to seek assistance.” She turned towards them, her predator smile growing over her thin face. “Ba Sing Se. And I won’t fail like my Uncle did. And you’re going to help me, aren’t you?” 

It wasn’t a question. Nothing was a question with Azula. Say no, and hope you don’t get burned. 

Mai jerked, her body stiff from sleep, from exhaustion, already leaping to her feet as she was half-expecting to see Azula looming over her. 

But there was nothing. 

She frowned, rubbed her knees with her hand. Wondered why she thought of that incident when she hadn’t thought of it since it happened. It was stupid of her to expect Azula to come looking for for her. Azula would get herself out at the first opportunity and leave them here to rot—if one could rot in the spirit world, that is, like they could at the Boiling Rock.  

Mai’s mouth twisted, and she stepped into the river to cross it. The bank rose up to meet her so that she didn't even wet her shoes. She crossed quickly and, as she began to climb the opposing knoll, she saw a flash of pink. "Ty Lee!" she cried, scrambling as she quickened her pace. "Ty Lee--is that you?" 

She hated herself for even asking. A flash of pink could be anything. It could be the open mouth of some monster. It could be just a bit of light. But still she followed it until she found herself alone in a broad expanse of grassland. "Ty Lee?" she called again, without real hope.

How she hated this place.


	3. That Girl With The Pink Aura

Ty Lee woke hanging from vines in a forest. Her long braid was limp and wet from the ocean. She untangled herself and swung from tree to tree, watching the little fluttering things glimmering in her path. “The Spirit World!” She put her ear to a tree, smoothing her palm against the broad expanse of bark, fuzzy with green growing things. “Can you help me?” she whispered, hoping that someone was listening. “I’m looking for my friends! One of them is a Kyoshi Warrior, and the other is tall and gloomy, and the other is—“ her tongue faltered—“well she’s amazing but also angry and cruel—but I think she’s getting better. At least I hope she is.” She paused, then forced her voice to brighten. “Have you seen them anywhere?” 

The forest stood silent and still. Ty Lee waited for it to speak to her, but when her legs cramped, she swung to the ground and began to walk. 

Ty Lee tried to keep an upbeat and positive attitude as she made her way through the forest, but it was hard. She was tired of walking and she was afraid she would not find her friends. Sometimes, when she saw the sturdy branches, she’d climb to the tallest part of the tree she could reach, shade her eyes against the brightness that didn’t seem to be coming from any sun, and scan the surrounding landscape. The treetops were unending, and she did not find any figures that could possibly be her friends. She seemed alone, and the anxiety rose in her as she scrambled back down to the ground to wander some more.

The silence was heavier than the heat. 

She didn’t know when she started speaking her thoughts out loud, but when she realized, she put her hands over her mouth, looking side to side, as if she’d see Mai standing on that rock over there, her arms folded, her long face in that downward turn of really, Ty Lee, really? 

But there was no one, and she was alone.  

Ty Lee tried to remember the last time she had been alone for so long. A the youngest of six sisters, who shared her face, there had been little time for her own thoughts.  

And then, after Azula had come, her generosity rising them from poverty to nobility, it had felt she was always either surrounded by Azula or Mai or both. They were her family now, her constant companions.

Until she had decided to join the circus, because she had been tired of the games that Azula played. Of course, she had hoped that Azula would come and she had in time, asking her to join their most important mission ever.

"You refused me, remember?" Ty Lee stopped, and turned. Azula was there. Her hair down, wearing only her simple robes. The red ones, edged in gold. Ty Lee's heart quickened. She knew it wasn't really Azula. Azula was dressed differently. But still--this Azula was familiar to her. So familiar, and Azula still took her breath away when she was like this.

"I had to convince you to join me. I had to force you." Her frown was deep, her mouth downturned. "How do you think that made me feel?"

Ty Lee thought about that day. Of course, she had known it was Azula who had set the fire and caused the stampede. Of course, she had known that Azula would not take no for answer. She hardly ever did. But still, it had hurt that the only time that Azula had come back was when she needed something from Ty Lee. It had hurt that she hadn't cared for Ty Lee as a friend, but as something to be used. She put her hand over her heart. "It didn't make you feel anything," Ty Lee said, "because you're not really her. You don't have any idea how Azula felt, or how I felt." She shook her head, her braid swinging from side to side. "But you must know of her, because you wear her face, trying to frighten me. Would you take me to her? We have lost each other, and I could use your help."

"What if she doesn't want to be found?" 

Ty Lee gaped. "Of course, she does. Everybody wants to be found if they're lost."

"Everybody?"

Ty Lee stamped her foot. A twig cracked beneath the weight. "Yes! Everybody!"

The spirit shook its head. Azula's long hair veiled its face. "I think you're wrong. If Azula wanted to be found, surely you would have found her by now."

"I can't find her because I don't know the way," Ty Lee said. "That's why I need your help, but you're not helping me! You're just giving me riddles with no answers. Please, help me!"

"Why should I help you?" The spirit bent its head, curiously.

"Why should you torment me like this?"

"You shouldn't be here," the spirit said.

"I'm only here because we were brought here! Tell me how to find her."

The spirit laughed then. It sounded just like Azula, and it made Ty Lee's heart ache. "You won't find them. You'll never find them." And then it was gone, vanished, as if it had never been.

Ty Lee could feel the tears come, and she let them, because she was alone and there was no one to tell her not to cry, that it made it her weak, that she needed to be strong. She fell to her knees, and rocked back and forth as she wept. She gripped the forest floor in fists and felt the dirt squeeze between her knuckles. It wasn't supposed to have ended like this. They had come back from the war. They had all survived, and that had been a relief because, as Azula said, people died in wars all the time.

She couldn't remember when she had realized that all three of them were on the front lines of a war. She thought it was when she was looking at the telescope from their perch at the top of the drill. There had been swarms of men entrenching themselves to meet them, to attack them, to defend their home. 

She had said, “What about those muscle-y guys down there?” because it was easier to say that than to call them soldiers because if they were soldiers, then what did that make her and Mai and Azula? 

Soldiers too—and she hadn’t remembered signing up for that. 

But she had fought because Azula had asked her to, and if she didn’t, then they would have been captured, and Ty Lee would not have wanted to be imprisoned by the Earth Kingdom if they had refused to fight.  

Then everything had gone wrong. Azula had broken up the team, imprisoned them anyway as if they were the traitors. But at least she hadn’t been alone. At least she had still had Mai. 

Then the war was over. They were released, and she could return home to the faces she had fled as a child, if she had wanted to. 

But she didn’t want to go back.

It only made sense to join the Kysohi Warriors. She had talents they could use, talents they wouldn’t be able to find anywhere else. And when she gave them her knowledge, she wouldn’t hold it over their heads like Azula had done.  

She couldn’t remember the last time she had truly been alone. She hadn’t even seen an animal since she’d been in this forest, much less another person.  

Even if that face looked like hers—she would welcome whomever it was with open arms. 

But there was no one. What if she never saw anyone ever again? What if she was alone forever? 

She forced herself to stand. She had to keep moving. She had to keep trying to find her friends, even if she was alone, even if it was useless and futile.

It should have grown dark by now, but something like a sunlit glow still suffused the trees. Cold settled into Ty Lee’s bones, and she shivered. She wished for a fire. They could have one, she figured, if Azula were still here, if she could still bend. 

She squeezed her eyes shut, and tried not to hope for things that could not be. 

The last time Azula had firebended, she had nearly burned the palace to the ground. The time before that, she had nearly given Mai a scar on her face to match Zuko’s.  

Ty Lee had to do what she’d done. She’d had to. It was the only thing, the only way. 

It wasn’t just about saving Mai. It was about saving Azula too. Saving Azula from herself. 

That’s what friends did for each other. She had done nothing wrong. She had betrayed no one. There was no reason to be ashamed of herself. 

But the shame burned deep, a low ember in the pit of her belly. She was a bad friend, just like she was a bad sister. 

No wonder everyone was disappointed in her.  

Ty Lee dragged a dirty wrist across her eyes, impatient. Azula would scoff at her tears, she knew, and Mai would have ignored them, she knew. She had no right to be sad. She had no claim to Azula, and Mai loved Zuko. And the minute she could see her sisters again, she would only see herself, a faceless part of a complete set, and the same cycle of thoughts would begin again--the need to escape, the need to be her own person. 

Not so complete anymore if she didn’t succeed in getting out of here. She had abandoned her family for far too long. 

Would they forgive her? She hoped they would. But she wouldn’t get out of here sitting around like this, feeling sad and sorry for herself as she wanted things she could never have. 

She walked through the trees until they began to thin into grasslands. She walked until she heard someone calling her name. She almost didn't notice at first, almost didn't hear, and when she did, the silence came again. She wondered if this was a trick. But then, her name was asked again, and Ty Lee turned until she saw Mai standing behind her. She couldn't see her face, just her back, but she would recognize Mai anywhere. She ran towards her, clasping her arms around her even though Mai jumped.

"Mai!" she cried. "You found me!"

Maybe the spirit had been right when it had said that Ty Lee would not find her friends. Maybe they would be the ones to find her instead. Ty Lee was alright with that--as long as they were found.

“There you are,” Mai said. Her voice was long and bored, flat as any blade, and Ty Lee loved her and her long, unhappy face.

“Oh, Mai!” She clutched Mai to her, fingers bunching through the fabric as she dipped her head in the cradle of Mai’s shoulder. “You’re okay! I was so afraid.” 

“Of course I am,” Mai said, like there was nothing at all odd about being split up in the spirit world, and as if there was absolutely nothing dangerous about it.  

But Ty Lee hugged Mai tighter when she felt her lightly touch her shoulder in return, felt the whisper of her hair, a little looser than it usually was in its little buns. She touched her cheek, but then stepped back when Mai stiffened in her arms.  

“There’s a spirit,” Mai said, “behind you.” 

It would be an understatement to say that Ty Lee was tired of spirits, but she turned anyway to see if it appeared to them as Azula. The spirit stared at them, and it stood very still and silent. Its arms were folded across its chest, its face blue and scowling.  

"I don't think that's a spirit," Ty Lee said. "It's not acting like the others. It's just standing there." Frowning, she moved from Mai's arms and approached the figure. Its face was wooden, as if it wasn't real, as if it was a mask. As she turned, she saw that was exactly what it was. Ribbons tied the mask securely to the figure's head, who had no hair.

"It's wearing Azula's clothes," Mai said. 

The figure remained very still, it's hands planted on its hips, just like Azula did, when she was waiting for something. And then, it's chest ballooning as if it were sighing heavily, it began to go through a very complicated set of firebending forms that Ty Lee would recognize anywhere. Only Azula could do something like this with such grace. Only Azula would not be able to firebend while actually doing it.

"It is Azula," Ty Lee said. "Azula, what's wrong?" But there was no answer forthcoming from underneath the blue mask with its blue grimace.

"She's playing a game with us," Mai said. "We don't have time, Azula. We need to go."

It was as if Azula had not heard. Instead, she pointed in front of her, and then pointed behind her. 

"Why are you wearing this ugly thing?" Ty Lee asked, reaching for Azula's face. Behind her, she could hear Mai sigh and mutter something behind her, but she didn't care. "What happened to your lovely hair?"

"She's giving us the silent treatment," Mai asked. "Why am I surprised?"

Azula fumbled for Ty Lee's hand and missed. Ty Lee peered, looking for Azula's eyes staring from behind the mask. But she saw nothing but emptiness, as if Azula had no eyes at all. “Something’s wrong.” Light as air, she tip-toed behind Azula, and Azula wavered for an instant, as if she could sense that Ty Lee had moved, but could not tell where. Ty Lee pulled the ribbon from the back of her head. The knot slid free, and the mask fell. Azula fumbled for it, and missed it, because Ty Lee had lunged forward and caught it first.

She was facing Mai, who staggered back, her hand over her mouth as her eyes widened. "That's what the spirit meant," Mai mumbled as Ty Lee stared at her and wondered what she was talking about.

Ty Lee turned, and nearly dropped the mask again as she bit her tongue so she would not scream.

Azula's face was gone. Her hard burning eyes were gone. The cruel curve of her mouth was gone. Her hair was gone.

Azula reached out to them fort the mask, her hands clenching around air until, nearly in a daze, Ty Lee put it in her grasping hand. Azula tied the mask over her facelessness quickly, but she did it crookedly. 

“A spirit did this,” Mai said. “We need to get away from here before it comes back to take our own faces.” 

“We can’t just leave her.” Ty Lee stepped toward Azula, undoing the ribbon again so that she could straighten the mask. When it was perfect, she re-tied the ribbon into a neat little bow. She turned Azula by the shoulders so that they faced each other. “There,” Ty Lee whispered as she pressed her lips lightly to the grimace carved into the blue mask. "We're going to save you."

If Azula felt the kiss, Ty Lee could not tell. She could not even tell if Azula could hear them, if she could understand what they said. "Show us the way," Ty Lee whispered. "What do you want us to do?"

Azula wavered for a moment, and then she tugged at Ty Lee's sleeves as she crossed the grasslands.

"Let's follow her," Ty Lee said. "Maybe we can help her get her face again. Not even you would wish such a fate on her--would you? Maybe we'll find Suki along the way. Or she'll find us."

Mai remained silent, and then shook her head. "Let's go, before we lose sight of her. You never know when the world is going to shift into something else. And I'm not even sure Suki is here. I'm beginning to feel that we were the only ones taken."

"We have to be sure," Ty Lee said, as they rushed to join Azula.

"I can't believe we're following someone who can't see where they're going," Mai said.

But they didn't have a better idea, so they took each other's hands, and walked.


	4. Masked Lies

They were following her, and relief suffused her skin. At least Azula still had this from them, or maybe they followed her out of pity. Out of compassion. Out of a friendship they may once have had.

She felt their presence behind her.

She wondered what would happen when they found their way back to Koh’s lair. She wondered if they would do what she needed them to do. If she should even ask them to do this thing—though what exactly was to be done, she did not know.

She only knew she could not do this alone, which was asking so much when she had been the one to push them from her. She shouldn't have done that, just like she shouldn't be bringing them with her now.

She had had a choice that day on the Boiling Rock, that day of the comet, when her father had left her behind, when she had raged and grieved for the loss of her friends, when she had realized that fear was just as unreliable a weapon as truth and love.

She had chosen wrong.

She had chosen to cheat.

It felt as if she was always making the wrong choice.

The truth had made Zuko stronger, and her lies had made her weaker, because Azula always lied. She had lied to get him home, and she had lied to keep him home, and she had lied to bring him to her knees.

She thought of the scar he bore from her, a shadow to the one from his father, a mirror to the one she had given the Avatar.

She lifted her hands, empty and still before her.

Her thoughts clouded heavily, and she shook her head, impatient and frustrated at the things she had lost.

What had she wanted them to know? That she was a great firebender? That she could hurt them without a second thought? That she had the power to do that and not to feel regret?

They had known. She had made sure they would not forget. She had lost her friends. Her brother looked at her with pity, her father with scorn. Her mother was a broken memory in a shattered mirror.

She tried to remember where it had started. Was it when she had first seen her father burn her mother? When she had been called a monster? It rang false now, like an excuse, and she could no longer follow the process her thoughts took as they burrowed their way deeper and deeper in her heart and mind, festering, until she could no longer remember how they came to be there.

She wondered if she could ever rip them out like she had torn the root from her open mouth.

If she even wanted to.

She put her hands to her face. The wood was hot as if baked under the sun. It was a fitting punishment that she had lost her face. She could barely bear to look at herself in the mirror, so afraid she was to see her mother over her shoulder, so afraid to see her father burning in her eyes.

She has too much of her father in her, they had said, as they gazed at her face.

Not anymore.

She was faceless, and it was right. But she could not leave her face in Koh’s care. She needed it to return home. She would not stay here, trapped, forever.

As she walked, she could feel Koh’s presence become closer, and she was reminded again of her selfishness in seeking out her friends. What could they do against the spirit? Now, she had only endangered them again.

It wasn’t too late. They weren’t there—yet.

Behind her, she felt that Mai and Ty Lee were speaking amongst themselves, though she could not hear them nor see them. There was a push and pull between them, something like reluctance or skepticism holding them back. That would be Mai, of course.

Azula knew Mai would wonder where she was leading them—was she be leading them in another trap? That would be something Azula would do. It would not be far from the truth either because Azula was indeed intending to set a trap—not for her friends, but for Koh.

He would be overconfident in his victory over her. He would fall into it neatly, just as she had fallen into the trap she had set for Zuko on the steps of the palace when she had cheated.

A warmth grew close beside her, and Azula thought it may be Ty Lee, who believed in her relentlessly. It was exhausting. It was failure waiting to happen. Eventually, Ty Lee’s patience would run out. Eventually, Ty Lee would betray her completely, as she had on the Boiling Rock. Splitting them apart and leaving her behind, again.

Bitterness stung her, and Azula pushed it away. She couldn’t afford to focus on the sting of it, as she had before. It had made her weak. It had clouded her thinking.

She needed her face back. That was the only thing that mattered.

Then escaping was the second thing that mattered.

The spirit world seemed to guide her footsteps. She wondered if Koh’s lair was always so inviting, making sure the lost and wayward found their path to him, that they might lose the very last thing that remained to them.

It was clever, she thought, as her feet recognized the shifting patterns, the labyrinths of roots from the tree that guarded Koh's cave. Azula stopped so suddenly that Mai ran into her from behind.

Azula could not see the cave, though she remembered it clearly. Still, she could sense Koh, waiting in the shadows, his many shifting faces, his many legs, the way his voice wormed through her.

She could bring Mai and Ty Lee with her. They could try to kill him. It wouldn’t be hard. She had killed the Avatar, hadn’t she? And Mai and Ty Lee were fighters. But she knew they would be no match for him because Mai’s joy in the fight was evident in the flash of her eyes, the gently uplift to her mouth. Ty Lee laughed outright as she flitted here and there. 

And that was what Koh sought, wasn’t it? Just as he had taken her face when she had cried over her mother, he would take their faces when they fought him. She knew this now. This was the knowledge that she had known before.

She could chance that they would be able to school their emotions. She could tell them and they would take the risk because what other choice did they have.

Mai shoved at her shoulder. Azula recognized her agitation: the constant need to move, the constant need to be doing something instead of nothing.

Or Azula could lie. Lie to her friends. Lie to Koh.

Azula always lies. 

The accusation rang in her ears as she knelt in the long grass and pulled it up by its roots so that she might have a place to write.

Stay, she traced in the dirt. I will face him alone. If I’m not back in half an hour, leave this place. The Avatar will find you.

She couldn’t hear them. She couldn’t see them. She didn’t know if they would obey her. As she rose, she felt the dust and small rocks buried in the soil splash against her legs, and she imagined that someone had kicked her words from the earth.

She imagined it would be Ty Lee. Of course she would be angry. Of course she wouldn’t understand.

Azula shook her head. She stood tall, like she had done before when she had still been a princess instead of this outcast, desperate thing. She remembered the feeling when she could bend and, for a moment, she pretended she could.

They would remember. They would remember that they feared her, that they would obey her. In that moment, they would see the princess they had both betrayed on the Boiling Rock, and they would remember why. 

Reaching behind her, she untied the ribbons from around her head, and the mask dropped beside her feet. She stepped over it, and followed the path the spirit world made for her, and went back into the cave.

Azula would have been afraid, but Koh already had her face. He couldn’t hurt her anymore. Koh’s shadows settled along her skin like a heavy robe, and she steeled herself, hands clenching into fists. Her heart heard the faint echo of her voice, a half-remembered come-and-get-it bravado that rang false in her memory.

She waited in the center of the pit, waited until she felt Koh rustle around her, felt the familiar pressure of his presence and his thoughts against her.

“So you come again, Fire Nation Princess. Only a spoiled brat would not abide by the rules.” Koh’s voice whispered in the chills that went down her spine. “The last person who came back to retrieve a face I stole did not succeed.” Azula felt the cool coils of himself loop around her feet. She wondered if he wore her face or that of another unfortunate.

“If they always fail, then you have nothing to fear,” she said with something that was not her mouth or her tongue but that was hers anyway.

“You imagine right,” Koh said, laughing, as he scuttled up the rocky ceiling. “Have you come with a plan in mind? I sense others, waiting for you. Perhaps you thought to bring them to me in exchange, hm? Or perhaps you wish to exchange that box of scrolls. I’m not like the owl!”

Azula would have smiled, but she couldn’t. “The scrolls aren’t for you.” She forced herself to relax, to inspect her nails as if she didn’t have a care in the world. But her thoughts turned back towards Mai and Ty Lee, and she feared that they would not obey her. That they would come after her, and that would be the worst thing in the world. It would ruin everything. It would ruin them.

She hung her head. It was a stupid dream, a silly imagination. Of course they would not come for her. They were not friends. She had made sure they would not want to come for her when she had come down here, alone. Why would she even think about them disobeying her, defying her? 

Her hands clammed with sweat, and she hid them behind her back to hide the way she trembled. She was losing focus. She was thinking about the way things might be instead of the way things were. She was slipping.

 “You’re ashamed of even considering offering me your friends,” Koh said. “But it is your nature, isn’t it? Why be ashamed of that? Do you see me ashamed of stealing your face?" 

Azula rallied herself. She steeled her voice so that it would not rise. “You’re boring me, Koh. Did you think I’d beg? What princess ever begs? But I do have a proposition that won’t waste our time: let’s play a game.” Azula paused and the air prickled as Koh stopped his roving. He was listening. “If I’m able to choose my face out of the many you have stolen, if I am able to recognize it as my own, then you will return it to me.” It was a gamble. All faces were the same with their eyes and noses and mouths. The last time she had looked at herself in a glass, she had smashed it to pieces with a hair brush. She could not even imagine how their journey on the seas and over the land had changed her.

Koh resumed scuttling around her. “Did you know that I had another visitor after you? Yes, I seem to be quite popular. It was someone you know.” 

He paused, as if he wanted her to guess, but this was not the game she wanted to play.

“I know a lot of people.”

Koh seemed to sigh as he slithered in the darkness. “It was the young Avatar.”

Azula wondered what the boy had said, wondered what had coaxed him to come back to his place when he had escaped it with his face before.

“I showed him your face, hoping to encourage some sort of reaction. You did try to kill him, after all! But he only bowed and thanked me before continuing on his way.”

“Is he still here?” Azula asked. If the Avatar was here, perhaps not all was lost. Perhaps, Aang would be able to guide them out—or, at least, Mai and Ty Lee. She could find her own way out if the Avatar thought being stuck here in the spirit world to rot was a fitting punishment.

“I don’t keep my many eyes on insignificant Avatars—you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. I’m sure he’ll be back once he figures out a way to return your face. Apparently, he hadn’t anticipated your return. Not that I blame him. Most can’t bare to face me a second time.” Koh laughed briefly, then sighed. “And yet, in the same day, the both of you have returned. Perhaps, you and the young avatar have more in common than I thought.” 

Azula reeled backwards. The idea that she and the Avatar had something in common was absurd. Still—if he were here, perhaps she should abandon this gamble and pursue his help instead. But that was foolishness. Of course Avatar Aang would not help her. She had tried to kill him. She had tried to kill two of his friends.  She could not risk asking for his help because who would help someone who had done all those things?

“Do you want to play my game or not?” she asked.

“I would, if I knew what was in it for me.”

Azula nodded, briefly. “If I lose, I will keep you company in your long solitude and lure more lost ones to your lair. I can be very convincing. In addition to that, you will have a chance to steal the faces of my two friends. They have been instructed to look for me if I do not return within the hour. They do not know it was you who took my face. They think you’re the only one who can help me.” By the time Koh realized her deception, it would be too late. Ty Lee and Mai would be safe from him.

He did not take long to consider. “Very well, Princess. I cannot turn aside a chance to add two new faces to my collection. I hope you are prepared to recognize yourself—it is not something many are willing or able to do. Let us begin.” 

Azula reached out her hands to touch the face that Koh presented her. It was a round face, not like her sharp, angular one, so she shook her head, and another face morphed beneath her palms. Long hair, stiff with salt, tangled between her fingers, and her heart jumped against her rib cage. But then she felt that the lip was marred by a scar, and she wondered where they had got it, if someone had given it to them, if it had been someone like her.

Her hands faltered for a moment, and Koh asked, “Are you giving up so soon, Princess?”

She shook her head, holding out her hands once more to touch Koh’s ever changing faces. She felt powdery white paint shimmer against her skin. She traced the jutting chin of a warrior. The golden circlet of a crown was hard between her fingers. They were the faces of adults, men and women who were long lost. 

Not her face.

Not the face of a child. 

Once, when she had been very young, she had touched Zuko’s face. This was before Ozai had burned him, when she and Zuko had been nearly friends. He had shoved her off, he had laughed at her. 

But she remembered the curve of his cheek. The way his hair brushed her finger tips.

Would she be able to recognize her face not by trying to find just herself in it, but him too? They might be separate but they were still connected because they were their father’s children, weren't they? 

Then she realized that she should look for not just Zuko, but for her father too, and even her mother. Everybody had always said she looked just like her father, but she must have a little of Ursa in her too, for was she not her mother?

There was something familiar, and Koh waited because she wished for him to wait. She caressed the high rises of that face with her thumbs, brushed her fingers over the eyes, wide set and burning like her father’s. She covered the left side of that face as she had once done before when she asked the Avatar if he didn’t see the family resemblance. She reached downwards, her fingers stroking the lips that were curved and cruel and cold, a mouth carved in her father’s image.

She reached upwards again, looking for the hair she had combed diligently every day. The strands were smooth, and fell through her fingers like water. She bowed her head as touched the face’s cheeks, and she felt the tears seeping from its eyes. Crying as Zuko had wept before his father, crying as she had wept chained to the grate, crying as surely as her mother had wept as she left in exile.

And then, as she became more sure that this was the face she sought, she realized, slowly and dimly, that she saw differently, because when she lifted her head, she saw the vast length of Koh coiled deep in the depths of the tree, and she saw that he wore her face. “This is mine,” she said, pressing her palm against her brow.

Koh howled and his home shook with his rage. “You see well,” he said, once he had calmed himself. “You have learned much since we first met. But be gone from here. Once your face is restored you have no business here, and I will not be inclined to speak to you again.”

Koh disappeared in the shadows, and Azula could see both with the strange sight that had allowed her to recognize her face, and again with the sight that was more familiar to her, something earthly and fleshly and mortal. She put her hands to her face, and felt her nose, her mouth, her teeth, her eyes stinging from the dirt on her fingers. Closing her eyes, she wiped the trace of tears away with the tattered cuff of her sleeve.

Then she dashed up the stairs to see if Mai and Ty Lee had waited for her, or if they had left as she had told them to. 

They were there, and Ty Lee, holding the mask Azula had dropped, threw herself into her arms. Mai hung back as she always did, wondering if they were going to actually try to get out of the spirit world, or if they were just going to stand around talking about it.

"Thank you for holding this for me,” Azula said, as she took the mask from Ty Lee. She considered it silently. It was the mask of the Blue Spirit, the one who had become an enemy of the Fire Nation, the one who had rescued the Avatar from Zhau. The one who had worn this mask was a traitor to the Fire Nation, to the once Firelord, her father. His wanted poster had hung beside the Avatar’s, her brother’s, her uncle’s. Her hands trembled as she held it. 

Ty Lee stood on tip toes and flicked at a spot on Azula’s forehead. “You’ve got something on you.”

Azula pushed her hands away as she tied the mask back over her face. “Leave it be.”

“Why are you covering your face?” Ty Lee asked. “It’s awful.”

Azula shrugged. “It feels like mine now, I suppose. And also, I don’t want the spirits here to recognize our faces. I want them to think twice before looking at us.” She knew that a mask was nothing to them, but it was something to her. Her body had betrayed her too many times, and it was her face that had betrayed her to Koh. She could not risk another betrayal, she could not risk for the beings here to see anybody but the person she wanted them to see. And besides, it was fitting for her to wear this. After all, now she was just as much a traitor as her brother, and whoever it was who had worn this mask. She had listened to the words her Uncle whispered about her father, how he had felt for her. She had not even fought when they had traded her for him in Ba Sing Se. She was obeying her brother’s wishes. Another failure to add to her long list of failures.

They wandered aimlessly for a long time. They wandered until their feet hurt. They wandered until they wondered if the spirits had gone and they were actually elsewhere, caught in between lands.

“We still haven’t found Suki,” Ty Lee said. 

Azula walked steadily onwards. “I don’t think she’s here.”

“Or do you just not want to look for her?” Mai said.

“I think she would have found us by now if she were here,” Azula said. She had not told them about the other sight that she had found in Koh’s cave. Pausing, she willed the sight to come to her, and it did. She looked for Suki, but she was nowhere to be found. The spirits had dragged them here because they were Fire Nation, taking them as they had taken the water benders. She thought, distantly, of Hama. She would be pleased. She would cackle just as she had on the ship. Azula laughed thinking of it while Ty Lee looked at her strangely.

“I’m glad you’re amused,” Mai said, her hands folded across her chest.

“If she’s not here,” Ty Lee said, “then she must have called for help.”

Azula remembered what Koh had told her in the cave. “The Avatar was here. He came to Koh. I think he was looking for us. Maybe she sent a hawk.”

“We’re not going to actually wait for him to come find us, are we?” Mai asked.

Azula shook her head. “We’re not.”

They walked in more silence. Azula let her fingers ripple through the grass and against the strange flowers that bloomed here. They walked until they came to a valley filled with fog and spirits. They crawled on their hands and knees to the very edge, the dirt crumbling underneath their palms, and peered down.

Azula could not see through the murk, and she found herself leaning farther in to get a closer look. She had thought at first it was spirits in the valley, but now she saw that she was wrong. 

They were people, like them.

“Maybe they can help us,” Ty Lee said.

Azula rolled her eyes. “If they could help us, don’t you think they would have helped themselves? They’re just as stuck as we are.”

“It was just an idea,” Ty Lee said, her fists resting against the spurs of her hips.

Mai looked down at the fog and the people. “It was a bad one.”

“Well, we’re in a bad place.” Ty Lee twisted her braid through her fingers. “We could go around?”

Azula shielded her eyes from the yellow light of the spirit world—something that could have been a sun if it set or rose. But there was nothing but the expanse of fog and souls, so she climbed a nearby straggling tree, her toes finding the nooks and crannies that could carry her weight, her legs wrapping themselves around the topmost limbs, her eyes squinting as she looked and saw it stretch out farther and farther away. 

They could walk around it, but it would take a long time.

She swung down, hanging from her knees for an instant before she flipped, landing lightly on her feet, her body poised to bend, as if she could still do it, as if it wasn't gone from her. She rose, stiffly, her eyes shifting from Ty Lee and then to Mai. “I will go through.” She plucked at her worn garments, unraveling a single thread. She reached for Ty Lee’s hand, then stopped herself. “May I?” she asked instead. 

Ty Lee stared at her for a moment before holding out her hand, and Azula tied the end of the thread around her finger.

“Once I find the other side, just follow this, and you’ll find it too.” She stepped away from them as Ty Lee stared at the thread tied loosely around her finger. Mai glowered at the fog and then to Azula. “There’s nothing to worry about, of course. I’m not afraid,” Azula said.

“Nobody said you were,” Mai said.

“I could see it in your faces,” Azula said, her voice sullen as she slid down the steep incline into the deep valley that held the seeping fog. She looked up when she reached the bottom, but the fog was too thick to see Mai’s or Ty Lee’s faces. She took a deep, steadying breath, like the kind she used to take before firebending, and turned to face what she thought was forward. She raised her arms out like Ty Lee did when she danced across the tightrope. It would be hard to walk in a straight line, but Azula could do it. She knew she could.

They would not be lost.

It was hard to see, but beyond that, the fog was not frightening.

Her arms trembled with the effort of keeping them raised. Her eyes burned with the effort of keeping them focused on their aim instead of being distracted by the shifting souls and the way the fog circled around her, as if it was conscious of her every movement.

It was then that she bumped into a familiar face: Admiral Zhao.

She remembered the stories of the few men who had survived the assault on the Northern Water Tribe. She remembered that her brother had tried to save the Admiral.

That dum-dum. Saving people who would only stab him in the back later. That was not how you survived. That was not how you won.

Or maybe it was, since Zhao was stuck here and her brother was the Firelord.

Zhao gripped her shoulders, and her concentration waivered, her gaze forced from what she thought was the other side. His face was pale and desperate. His hair was unkempt, coming out of its loose top-knot.

She tried to step back, but he wouldn’t let her go, his fingers curling through his clothes, gripping her skin tight enough to bruise. She struggled with him, and he only held her tighter. “Spirit! Have you seen the Avatar?” His breath was a cold vapor against her face. “Have you seen him?” 

Without thinking, she clenched her hand into a fist, and slammed it against his cheek. He reeled back, and she pushed her foot against the hollow of his belly, completely knocking him off balance as she neatly slipped out of his grasp. “If I had, I wouldn’t tell you.” She tried to find the spot her eyes had lost, but it was gone, and she tried to look back at her footprints to see if she could rediscover the path she had walked, but they were gone as if she had never been. “Besides, don’t waste your time, Zhao. Either you’ll lose, or you’ll just become his friend.”

But Zhao was already gone, and she was utterly alone. She went to unravel more of her thread, but it was broken, and she only held a scant length of it between her fingers.

She forgot to breathe as she fell to her knees, her fingers scrabbling in the dirt for the other end that she might knot them together, so that Mai and Ty Lee would not remain lost and waiting on the brink, waiting and waiting for her to tug the thread to let them know it was alright for them to cross in her footsteps.

It was gone. 

Her hands shook in her lap as she raised her head, her neck craned back. She willed herself to see with the sight that had let her see her face so that she might see the faces of her friends once more.

Nothing. Nothing but the swirling clouds of fog drifting around her, blinding her vision, weakening her will. She looked towards her right where she thought the other side was, and then back to where she thought she had come.

She chewed the meaty insides of her lips until she tasted blood.

She could leave them. She could continue her way forwards, find the way out. Maybe even come back with the Avatar to fetch them.

She imagined them waiting for her. She imagined them giving up on her and plunging forward into the fog.

She imagined them making it through, passing her in the dark, and climbing out the other end themselves.

She imagined making it out herself, and coming back with Avatar Aang only to find them gone, lost in the spirit world.

She clutched her belly, rocked back and forth on her knees, hot tears streaking down her cheeks, even as a voice that sounded like hers whispered in her ear, “I thought you didn’t have sob stories like the rest of them?”


	5. Oh Sister, What If You Lose It All

Zuko could barely be seen over the number of scrolls piled on his table. They detailed the current state of the government, provided a complete inventory of the various artifacts kept in the royal libraries, and featured requests from several Fire Nation governors petitioning for aid, funding, and other economic sensibilities. Scattered across these scrolls were pamphlets issued by the New Ozai Society protesting the outrageous decision to release Firelord Ozai to Ba Sing Se so that he might stand trial for his supposed crimes against the Earth Kingdom. 

Zuko’s tea had gone cold, almost stale, as he slept for the first time in several days.  

A messenger hawk interrupted, tapping his window as it fluttered to the sill, and he jumped as he rubbed his bleary eyes with his fists. There was a tube stamped with the mark of the Southern Water tribe strapped to its back. A very small smile flitted across Zuko’s face before he realized that whatever news the hawk bore was probably bad, and then he wished that Mai were here instead of elsewhere with Azula. 

He sighed, scraped his palm against his jaw, and opened the window. The hawk sat prettily on his arm as he plucked the scroll from its tube, but then it hopped to Zuko’s shoulder and began to run its beak through Zuko’s hair. “Stop,” Zuko said, half-heartedly as he made no effort to remove the creature. “You’re pulling.” The hawk chirruped something that could be construed as an apology, and nestled its beak in the curve of Zuko’s neck before flapping back to the window to preen in the sunshine. 

Carefully, Zuko unrolled the parchment.  

He had been right. It wasn’t good news.  

It was from Aang, whom Katara had invited to the South Pole when Suki had shown up without the Fire Nation girls, distraught about a spirit that had pulled them into the ocean. “I’ve never seen her like this,” Aang wrote. “Even Sokka can’t get her mind off what happened.” 

Zuko’s face fell as he continued to read. He had long been expecting some kind of word about Azula—something about how she had given them the slip or tried to stage a coup or anything but this.   

Aang told him how he had immediately meditated into the spirit world, where he had learned from a very grumpy monkey that Azula had gone to visit Koh, which according to Aang, was a very dangerous and very bad idea because Koh steals people’s faces, Zuko, he steals their faces! Koh was wearing her face when Aang found him, and then he had to return to the physical world because he didn’t know how to return a face that Koh had stolen. Later, he would commune with his past selves. They had lived a long time, he assured Zuko. He would learn what to do from them. 

 Zuko crushed the parchment in his fist and squeezed his eyes shut. That was just hopeful Avatar talk.  

He didn’t know how this Koh looked but he imagined his sister without a face, without those cold, sparking eyes, without the cunning turn to her mouth as she smiled like she always knew something he didn’t know. 

Zuko swallowed around the lump welling in his throat. He tried to smooth the parchment where it had wrinkled, but his hands shook. “But she always makes it,” he whispered. Didn't she? 

He thought of her falling through air. He thought of him falling with her, so far apart. He thought of Katara pulling him to the bison as Azula fell. She wasn't going to make it. There was nowhere to go but down. He thought of her hair come undone, caught in the wind, as she used her piece to catch herself on the rock as she watched him go. 

She always made it. 

Except this time. She was lost in the spirit world. Lost forever, maybe. 

Zuko looked at the hawk, who seemed sad, but perhaps that was just him being lonely and wishing for someone to share these feelings, whatever they might be. He could not tell if he felt grief or relief, and he hated that he did not know.  

He kept reading. Of course, Mai and Ty Lee had been dragged down with her, and of course Aang couldn’t find them either. But at least, Koh probably didn’t have their faces. That was some reason for hope, Aang wrote, as if that would assure Zuko. Aang told Zuko that he wasn’t sure how long Azula could survive without her face if her physical body had been dragged into the spirit world. Anything could happen—but realistically speaking. 

Aang didn’t finish the sentence. Only assured Zuko that he would do everything he could to find her and to help her. 

The letter crumpled in Zuko's hand, beginning to smoke and smolder before he remembered that he did not want to fuel his bending with anger and rage and hurt. He dropped the parchment, its edges burnt black, and stalked circles in the ornate rug under his feet. 

He needed to go to the Southern Water Tribe. He needed to find Mai and his sister, even if it would be better if she were to stay in the spirit world where she couldn't hurt anybody ever again. But maybe it wouldn't come to that. Maybe—she would change.  

He had changed, hadn't he? 

But he couldn’t just up and leave. The political situation was already unstable, and who knew what the New Ozai Society would do if he absented himself from the throne. 

Leaving would only send his people into more turmoil, and his duty had to be to them first.  

He looked down at his clenched fists. 

He trusted Aang, of course. But it felt wrong for him to sit by and do nothing, to not even try to find them. He took a nearby cushion and screamed into it before calming himself.   

If only Uncle Iroh were here. He would know what to do. He was a spiritual man. He himself had gone to the spirit world, or so it was rumored. But even if it wasn’t true, his uncle still gave pretty good advice. Even Aang thought so.  

Zuko took the cup with the stale tea, and poured its remaining contents into a wilting, potted plant that someone had put in a spot where the sun shone. He prepared a new cup of tea like his uncle had taught him. He warmed the water with a soft blaze from his fingers, and he steeped the jasmine just like his uncle had when they were the owners of a simple tea shop of their own. 

He breathed the steam from the jasmine tea, letting the ritual calm his nerves, the scent bringing to mind his uncle’s voice, a steady stream of words that he couldn’t quite make out but that sounded comforting, that reminded Zuko this wasn’t the end, that there was still hope, that he could meet his responsibilities as Firelord and to Mai and even to his sister.  

Once he had finished drinking his tea, Zuko sat at his writing desk, stretching a blank piece of parchment taut so he could write without blotting the paper and soiling the words. He dipped his brush to write first to Aang, and he left it poised there over the shallow bowl of ink, little drops dripping from the brush. 

What to say? 

Resentment bit towards him, and he closed his eyes against it.  

He should have known that this would happen, and now that it had, there was no time or energy to wish that things were different. He could only deal with the situation as it was.  

He thanked Aang for letting him know what had happened to his sister, but that he could not go to the Southern Water Tribe because of the tense political situation in the Fire Nation. He told Aang he was writing a second letter to his uncle requesting that he come in his stead, and that it would be better that way, since he was more experienced in the ways of the spirit world. 

He couldn’t help but smile sadly at that. Besides, he would just mess it up if he were to go, just like Azula had messed it up. He could imagine it now, him tromping around in such a world. 

Sometimes, it was easy to forget that he and Azula were so similar in so many ways, and how much he hated that. Their bending had been affected by the decisions they had made. He’d often wondered why Azula had lost hers to a greater extent than he had. Maybe it was because she had lost so much and had been unable to find something to replace what she had lost.  

It was as if they were fated to perpetually follow the other in some kind of spiraling circle that lead nowhere. 

Even though she had been born second, she had always been before him in the eyes of his father, and he had always struggled to follow in her footsteps. He could still hear his father’s voice saying that Azula had been born lucky, and that he had been lucky to be born. 

He had come to Ba Sing Se as a refugee and beggar, and she had followed him as a conqueror.  

She was to have been crowned Firelord, but then she had been defeated, and he had become the new Firelord, vowing to restore the lost honor of his people. 

What one started, the other always seemed to finish. 

They were separate, and they were whole. 

He touched the scar his father had branded into his face, his eyes closed and his head bent. He remembered the way that Azula’s hair had been cut jagged over one side of her face, how she had covered her own eye with her hand as she challenged the Avatar to recognize her. 

The family resemblance, she had said, her voice brittle with malice.  

The thought made his breath shudder in his throat, and he looked down, pulling his robe away from his chest, staring at the livid scar that Azula had burned into him, nearly matching the one that she had given Aang. 

“We’re not the same,” he whispered to himself.   

But he knew that wasn’t always true. She was the one who had first told him that only he could restore his honor, and he had repeated her words to Aang when he asked that he might join them.  

He squeezed his eyes shut. 

There were times where Azula was almost kind, and those was the hardest moments of them all. They never lasted, and they were always lies except when they weren't. 

She had stepped behind him as they were on the boat to Ba Sing Se. She had smoothed the fringes of his hair with her fingers. She told him that she hadn’t been lying when she had said she needed him, that she couldn’t have done it without him.  

What if she hadn’t been talking about conquering Ba Sing Se or killing the Avatar? 

What could they have been to each other, as brother and sister, if only things had been a little different, if only they had been on the same side for once in their lives? Except they had been—in Ba Sing Se—and they had done something horrible together, and she had needed him. 

Grief belly-bottomed through him as he glanced down at the brief letter he had written to Aang. Maybe he would never see Azula’s face again except in memory or in bad dreams. 

But then there was the sick relief chasing through him, too, and he let the brush drop from his fingers as he sagged against the desk and wept. 

It took a long time before he was able to compose himself enough to write his uncle, pleading with him to make his way to the Southern Water Tribe, so he could help Aang find his terrible, terrible sister.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title inspired by Avicii's Hey Brother


	6. If I'm Far From Home, Will I Hear You Call?

"I thought you didn't have sob stories like the rest of them?" Azula raised her eyes to see Zuko standing over her. His hair was undone, like it had been when she had captured him in Ba Sing Se. His robes were simple red. He was smiling at her, like he was teasing her about something. 

She rolled her eyes. "What are you smiling about?" She scrambled to her feet, and Azula thought there was something missing, that there was something she should be remembering about him. "What are you doing here?" Where was he supposed to be anyway? She tried hard to remember. She just knew he wouldn't be here, not here with her, at least. Not here in the spirit world. 

He took a silk handkerchief from his sleeve and handed it to her. She held it awkwardly in her hand. "I came to find you." 

"Well, I'm here, so what do you want to say?" She tapped her foot. "It's not like I don't have places I need to be." Her hand went to her waist, and there was the box of water bending scrolls pressing against her palm, and then she remembered. "Don't you want me to get to the South Pole just as quickly as I can, Firelord Zuzu?" 

He looked at her for a long time. He didn't even react to the nickname he hated so much coming from her. There was something different about him, she suddenly realized. There was something missing. Not his crown, no not that. He never wore that anyway even though he had taken it from her, like he was always taking something she cared about, or worse, someone. She thought of Mai and hated her.  

"Come home," he said. He wasn't smiling anymore, but there was something in his eyes that made her look away, and then look back again. His scar was gone. The one over his eye, the one their father had given him. Disgust soured in her belly. 

"You're not real," she said. She clutched her head with her hands, as her mouth twisted behind the blue mask she still wore. "I'm hallucinating again!" She didn't know what was worse, seeing her mother or her brother. 

"And you're wearing something of mine," Zuko said. His face was very serious, but his eyes were still kind. "You can have it. You need it, like I needed it." 

Azula glared at him. "I don't have anything of yours. How can I, when you sent me away with nothing?" She shook her head, frustrated. Why was she talking to him like he was the real Zuko? He wasn't. He never would be. 

The light refracted around Zuko, blinding her for a moment as she shielded her masked face with her hands. A figure stood in front of her where Zuko had once stood. He was dressed in black, dual swords held in his hands. He wore a blue mask like hers.  

She knew him from the wanted posters.  

"Didn't you ever wondered who the Blue Spirit was, and why he just disappeared?" His voice still sounded like Zuko's. 

"I didn't care who the Blue Spirit was! The only thing that mattered that he was a traitor." 

"Your uncle is a traitor, and your mother did vicious, treasonous things. And then Zuko betrayed you too. Maybe treachery runs in the family. Maybe it even runs in you." Shadows twisted between them as they stared at each other with their matching blue faces. "Don't you want to see?" 

Azula stepped towards him. She reached for him through the light, through spiraling columns of dust kicked up by her feet. She touched the blue wooden jaw and lifted it upwards, so that the blue ribbons tying it to him slid through his hair.  

Zuko was behind the mask, and this time his face was scarred just as she remembered him. "I told you it was mine first," he said, smiling that I-told-you-so grin. 

"So I'll just take it like I've taken everything else," she said. She remembered the knife that Uncle Iroh had given Zuko, when she had only been given a doll. How she had wanted that knife. It was more hers than Zuko's, but she had let him take it from her because he had been sad about Mom, because Mom hadn't been there to make her give it back. 

The spirit began to fade, the black cloth becoming translucent and golden. "But I also said that you didn't need it anymore. Keep it, because what one starts, the other always finishes." The spirit dissipated, leaving her alone. 

"Am I supposed to understand what that means?" Azula said, raising her hands as she turned in circles. "You might need to stop speaking in riddles! You know that's what Iroh does, not Zuko." 

She paused, panting, out of breath and exhausted. Her hair stuck to the back of her neck as she tried to remember what she was doing here. She was supposed to be looking for something, but she couldn’t remember what. The people milling around her were more ghost than person, and she wondered if that was what she was turning into. If, after losing her face, she was about to lose her body too. She held her hands out in front of her, and they seemed real. She touched the mask again, just to assure herself it as there. At least, she would always have this. She'd always have a face of some kind. 

A heavy hand fell on her shoulder and turned her. Azula raised her hands, ready to fight, but lowered them again when she saw that it was only her mother, the jade inlaid comb still nestled in her brown hair.

“Azula,” she said, and Azula closed her eyes, her voice hitching, as her mother held her hand in hers.  

Her mother tilted her face towards her, guiding her by the chin. “Why are you wearing this horrible thing?” Her hands traced the carven features of the mask before reaching behind to undo the knots. The mask fell into Azula’s lap as her mother cupped her cheeks in her warm, dry palms. “There you are—there’s the daughter I know and love with her beautiful face.” She leaned back a little as if she could get a better look at Azula. “You’ve grown so lovely. I'm so proud of you.” Her mother’s voice was soft as she tucked Azula’s stray hairs behind her ears.

Azula jerked away, but her mother gripped her tighter, her fingers spread wide across Azula’s face. Azula blinked at her, resentful, even as her glance slid away to be lost in the fog. She could not brush the hot tears that were about to spill down her cheek lest she accidentally touch her mother’s hand.  

“What are you doing here?” Azula asked. “I’ve been searching for you everywhere.” 

“Have you?” Her mother looked at her with piercing eyes. “It appears your search is now at an end.” 

“You’ve been gone for a long time,” Azula said. She wanted to tell her that Zuko still fed the turtle-ducks like she had taught him. That he still picked flowers as they once had done together, especially when the fire lilies had been in bloom. How he had kept doing it, even after she was gone. Azula had laughed at him, had plucked the flowers from his hand, ripping the petals off because Mom wasn’t there to stop her, because Mom wasn’t there and she wasn’t ever coming back--didn’t Zuko know anything. 

Her mother caught the tear that shed, and then she wiped her face with her gilded sleeves. “This is a change, my love. Aren’t you the one supposed to make the others cry?”  

Azula pushed her away, and she disappeared. She wondered if her mother was really here or if it had just been another hallucination or if it had just been another spirit playing with her, making fun of her and her emotions. 

She put her hand to her face. The mask was still there even though she hadn't put it back after her mother had taken it off without asking first. That had been rude. Hadn't mother said herself that she should always ask first? 

So it had been something else. “I’m not crazy!” she screamed as if there was anybody there to hear her, as if there was anybody there to answer. 

“Hello?” someone cried out.  

Azula’s head jerked up, her eyes roving as she willed herself to see through the fog. 

“Is there anybody there?” the voice continued. “Cousin, is that you?” 

Azula squeezed her eyes shut, trying hard to remember. 

“Cousin!” the voice was more desperate now, more urgent. “Cousin! If you are there, can you bring me word of my father? I have not seen him, and I am afraid. Cousin?” 

“Lu Ten,” Azula called, finally remembering, finally finding her voice. She hated how it wavered in her mouth, trembled against her teeth. “There’s nothing to be afraid of unless you’re a coward. I’m over here.” 

Azula pushed her way through the crowd of souls, following Lu Ten’s voice until they found each other. He looked much the same as when he had marched off to war so long ago, never coming back like all the other soldier boys who never came marching home. Maybe he looked a little gaunter, a little thinner, a little worse for wear after besieging the thick walls of Ba Sing Se for so long before finally meeting his end. She thought, you should have come with me because no one died when I took Ba Sing Se. But she bit her tongue, and looked him up and down. He still wore his Fire Nation armor, so many years out of date. “Fancy meeting you here,” she said. “Your father tried to find you after you died, but I suppose you missed each other when he came to the spirit world, overcome with grief. But maybe he didn’t think to look for you here.” 

If her words hurt, Lu Ten did not reveal it to her. Instead, he only said, “I am glad then that he did not find me here in this lost place. If he came to find peace and balance with himself, I would not wish him here.” He smiled at her. 

Azula scowled. “That’s Avatar talk.” 

“I do miss him very much,” Lu Ten said. “Sometimes, I think I see him here—but it’s just the fog, taunting me.” He looked down at his feet, his boots still stained with blood. 

“I’m sure he misses you very much, even after all this time,” Azula said. “It doesn’t mean anything that he has found himself another son.” 

Lu Ten’s head jerked up, a smile playing at his mouth, and Azula could not bear the sight of it. “What? He’s married again? What excellent news!” 

Azula held her head back and laughed. “Nothing so obvious. It’s only Zuko. Uncle Iroh considers him like a son. I suppose that would make you something like brothers if you were alive.” 

Lu Ten considered her. “By that logic, that would also make you something like my sister.” 

Azula looked away from him. “I don’t need any more brothers.”  

“Are you dead?” Lu Ten asked as he took her hand in his.  

She stared at their hands held together, and decided that they could stay like this. They would not become separated this way. “I don’t know if I’m dead,” she said. “I don’t even remember how I came to be here.” She kicked savagely at the dirt, and it disappeared in the mellow light. Had she been dragged or had she been swallowed? She remembered the water, the rush of it up her nose, the salt stinging her chapped lips, her lungs burning for air. Just like last time, when Katara had defeated her. She hadn’t been able to breathe, hadn’t been able to bend. Even now, she struggled to breathe as she put her hand over her chest, trying to guide the breath in and out.  

“Azula?” Lu Ten said, his voice tender. 

What had she said, so long ago? That she wished he would die so there would be no heir, one step closer to her father taking the throne? 

She looked up into his kind eyes and hated them. 

Behind the mask, it was very easy to say, “It would be very hard to kill me.” 

Lu Ten smiled a little. “I can imagine so.” 

“What are you doing here?” Azula said as she surveyed the fog and the wandering figures within it. “What is this place?” 

“It’s a punishment,” he said in his quiet voice. 

Azula rolled her eyes, laughing. If anyone was less deserving of punishment in their whole family, it was probably Lu Ten. “I don’t understand. What have you done to deserve this?” 

“I laid siege to the Earth Kingdom.” 

“You father did—and he didn't even do that good of a job,” Azula said. “You were just doing as he asked so that he would be pleased with you, proud of you. You were being a good son.” 

“I could have disobeyed him, but I didn’t.” 

Didn’t like Zuko hadn’t until the very end. Didn’t like she hadn’t. Azula chewed the inside of her mouth. “You’ve been here for a long time then. Have you found the way out yet?” 

He turned away from her. “If I had, do you think I would still be here? But enough of this dreary place. How is my father?” 

He’s a fat old man. General only in name. Nothing of a dragon about him. A loser who caused her brother to betray her, who kept whispering and telling her things she did not want to be true. “He’s well,” she said instead. “He owns a tea shop in Ba Sing Se.” 

Lu Ten’s face fell. “The Fire Nation conquered Ba Sing Se.” 

Azula stared into the fog. “Once it did. I brought Ba Sing Se to its knees without taking a single life. I had the great walls torn down.” She smiled the old cruel smile. “I didn’t even have to do it with a machine. The earthbenders did it for me, benders sworn to defend the Earth Kingdom and its legacy and its history. They abandoned their king, they abandoned their generals for me.” 

“You?” 

Was that a hint of anguish in his voice? If so, it was misplaced. “Me. I succeeded where my father failed, where your father failed.” She could not curb the flare of pride that burned through her. “And then your father took it back during the comet with members of the White Lotus. I wasn't there because I had to keep the throne safe.” Her voice started to shake and she took a moment to calm herself. “I challenged Zuko to an agni kai. After all the times he’d wanted to fight me and I turned him down, I finally said yes.” Had she been so desperate, so weak, to feel the need to prove herself to him? The old anger returned as weak and pale as the ghosts with whom they walked. “He would have beaten me.” She touched her face, her palm covering the eye where Zuko bore his scar. If she had shot him with lightning, he would have turned it back towards her. It would have lifted her off her feet, scorching her flesh, if she had not cheated. Maybe, she would have even born a scar like him, instead of giving him one of her own. 

But what did she care for honor even though it was the lack of it that had eventually brought her to her knees. 

It wouldn’t have mattered. She would have lost no matter what she had done. 

“What happened?” 

Her cheeks flushed, and she was glad she wore the mask so that he could not see. She was embarrassed. Ashamed. Angry. She was tired of feeling all these things when she had burned them away a long time ago with her blue fire that left nothing behind. Her eyes welled, again. Why couldn’t she stop crying? She was like Uncle Iroh when he had come back from Ba Sing Se, crying all the time. “I cheated, and I attacked someone who had accompanied him to take me down because I knew it would hurt Zuko more than anything I could throw at him. But he threw himself in front of her like a fool and took the blow meant for her. She was the one who defeated me, a waterbender named Katara. And then she saved Zuko because he would have died otherwise.”  Her mouth was dry and bitter. She looked at Lu Ten, who had paused, looking at her, his mouth open as if surprised. “Why are you looking at me like that?” 

“What happened to you, Azula?”  

She held his gaze for a moment before turning away, gesturing vaguely towards the fog and the spirits trapped within its thick coils. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? I’m lost. We’re lost.” She forced a smile to her lips that he couldn’t even see because of the mask she wore. “But don’t worry, cousin. We’ll find a way out. And if we can’t find one, we’ll make one.”  

But the simple fear that she would not see Mai or Ty Lee or even her brother again nagged her as they wandered through the ghostly souls. They walked in silence, and she wondered that Lu Ten would stay with someone like her when everyone else had left. 

They wandered for a long time until Lu Ten insisted that Azula sleep. "When was the last time you slept?” he asked, and Azula couldn’t answer because she couldn’t remember. 

So she stretched on the ground, and she slept, until she heard someone whispering, I love you, I love you, I love you, in her ear, and she flinched awake. She was cold and sore and there was no one leaning over her, no hand caressing her cheek, no kisses to her forehead—just wisps of fog and the hollow voices of the ghosts and the cold mask over her face. 

She climbed to her feet, and found Lu Ten lying on his back nearby, eyes closed as if in sleep. As if he needed to sleep when he was dead.  

Was this how he had looked when he had died, she wondered, as she leaned over him. Wisps of dark hair strayed across his cheekbones, and she frowned. 

How had he died? Had he been crushed by rocks? Pierced by an arrow? Choked by a bare hand? 

She brought her own hand to her throat, felt the weak swell of it beneath her palm, the vulnerable yield as she pressed against her windpipe. 

Lu Ten woke then, his eyes blinking sleepily. “What are you doing?” His words blurred together, as Azula swung away from him and stretched. She could hear the way the dirt gritted under the weight of her foot. She could hear the way her breath rasped in her throat, the way her belly pained for food. 

Everything was too much, too loud. 

Why couldn’t her body be as silent and still and gone as her bending? 

Her face settled into something familiar, something like the sneer she had once given to those who reached for her. “We need to leave. We’ve wasted enough time. We still need to find Mai and Ty Lee and then a way out of this place.” Guilt hung heavy on her shoulders. She shouldn’t have listened to Lu Ten and slept. How much time had they wasted? How long had she slept? It was impossible to tell in this light. 

“Where will we start?” Lu Ten asked, easily. “We can barely see a few inches in front of us. I don’t even know how big this valley is. What’s your plan for finding your friends?” 

“I’ll call their names until they find me,” Azula said. Perhaps, if she still had her firebending, she could have burned the fog away and just ran from person to person until she found them. 

“They won’t hear you. The fog thickens in your ears too.” 

“I heard you,” Azula said sharply. 

Lu Ten shrugged, then climbed to his feet. “Perhaps the spirit wanted us to meet. Or perhaps we just got lucky.”  

“You’re not as optimistic as I remember you,” Azula said as she picked a direction and strode forward.  

“And you are not as I remember you,” Lu Ten said.  

Azula laughed merrily. “Then your memory is very bad because I have not changed at all.” 

“I don’t think that’s true."

He smiled when he said it, and Azula turned away from him, calling out for Mai and Ty Lee until her voice was hoarse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title inspired by Avicii's Hey Brother


	7. Bad Memories

“Mai.” Ty Lee plucked at Mai’s long sleeves insistently. 

“What?”  

“The thread—it’s gone.” She held the thread up. There was no tension. It had gone absolutely loose, like it wasn’t tied to Azula anymore. Frantic, Ty Lee pulled at the lengths of it, and Mai refused to look, biting down instead on the vague flicker of disappointment she still managed to feel because she shouldn’t be surprised. 

Of course Azula would cut them loose. She didn’t care about them. 

Ty Lee’s face was stricken as she found her way to the other end of the thread. It was ragged, like someone had ripped it which was exactly what Azula would do since she didn’t have something sharp to do it for her. It wasn't as if she could just steal another one of Mai's knives, after all. She probably used her teeth. 

“What are we going to do?” Ty Lee said. 

Mai shrugged. “Walk.” 

“We need to find her,” Ty Lee said, clutching to Mai again like she had all the answers. “Something could have happened to her. We could be her only hope!” 

“She’s fine,” Mai said. “She’s leaving us.” Sighing, she shrugged out of Ty Lee’s grasp, and looked at Ty Lee, exasperated. She wanted to ask Ty Lee why she kept pretending that this was going to turn out any different. Was she really that silly and naive? Mai knew she wasn't, but sometimes she didn't understand Ty Lee at all.

“No she hasn’t!” The words burst from Ty Lee, ugly and angry, twisting her face so intently that Mai had to glance away. 

“She has,” Mai said.  

“I’m going after her,” Ty Lee said. “And you can follow me or do whatever you want. Like you always do!" The words came out in a rush, and Mai saw that Ty Lee was crying, though she was trying very hard not to do so. 

Mai turned her back on Ty Lee, her gloved hands gripping her forearms so that she would not be swept aside by Ty Lee and the force of her accusations. But then Ty Lee was reaching for her hand, as if she could drag Mai across the divide of their disagreement to her side. “If we go after her into the fog, we'll just be as lost as her," Mai's voice was dull and flat, cutting Ty Lee off in the middle of whatever stupid thing she was about to say next. Maybe if she tried logic and reason, instead of something emotional, Ty Lee would listen. “If we're both moving, we'll never find each other—if she's there to be found. We should stay put.” 

Ty Lee shook her head, her braid swinging back and forth. “That is the stupidest thing I've heard! Even you’re right, I don’t care.” She looked up at Mai. Her eyes were clear, her face smiling, and Mai wondered how she could shift so smoothly from mood to mood. "We need to find her because that is what friends do." Ty Lee's hands were heavy on her shoulders. "I understand—I don't know, I really don't know if following Azula into that soupy fog is the best idea, but I do know that we have to do this! What if she's the one that's lost, and she's the one that's sitting still?" 

Mai sighed, her glance sliding away from Ty Lee, settling on a scrub of brush even as she tried to imagine Azula remaining still about anything. She wanted to tell Ty Lee not to go after her because if she did, she'd never be free of Azula. She'd always be target practice. Mai remembered the game they had played as kids, the burning apple on her head, the faint smell of burning hair before Zuko had crushed her into the fountain, getting her wet of cold. 

She remembered how Ty Lee had giggled in her palms as she stood beside Azula, how she always stood beside Azula except for that one time. And even then—Ma sighed. "It's a bad idea." 

“I promised to go with her,” Ty Lee said. She drew herself up to her full height, still coming up short of Mai. “Doesn't my word have honor too?" 

It stung, the hidden accusation. For a moment, Mai hated Ty Lee, and then she buried it where she hid all the other thoughts and feelings that made her skin shrivel and dry. “Fine.”  

“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” Ty Lee said, holding on to Mai, hugging her tightly, whispering her gratitude into her shiny black hair.   

“Don’t.” Mai didn’t hug her back. 

Ty Lee stepped away, looking mildly abashed before dropping into the fog. Mai followed slowly after. The rock sprayed into grit and pebbles beneath her heels, and she heard Ty Lee cry out as one accidentally struck her. 

Mai felt bad about that but there was nothing she could do as she fell faster and faster, rolling forward as she struck the ground. She rose to her feet, and jumped when Ty Lee gripped her elbow. 

“We need to stay together,” she whispered, threading her own fingers through Mai’s. 

Unable to see anything but the fog and the ghostly figures wandering within, Mai nodded, her throat dry as she tried to swallow away her fear.  

"You're going to break my hand," Mai said, looking down at where Ty Lee had been gripping her tightly for what felt like hours.  

“I don’t want to lose you.” Ty Lee looked up at her, her face pale and ashen, her eyes still wet with tears shed and unshed. “This is a place for the lost. I can feel it.”  

Mai sighed as she tried to look hopeful and optimistic—probably failing miserably. She was glad there was no mirror for her to see how she was the worst friend ever. “We need to figure out a way to get rid of this fog.” 

“It’s a spirit,” Ty Lee said. “I can tell. It’s not going to go away unless we ask it to.” Then suddenly her face brightened, and she dropped Mai’s hand so she could clap her own. Mai pulled her arm to her chest, rubbing the ache away as Ty Lee skipped forward a few paces. “Please, spirit!” She bowed deeply towards it. “We are simply trying to find our friend. Will you please help us? She’s about our age and our height. Her hair is long and dark. She might have the heir of a princess because that is who she is! She might also be a bit mean and cruel but please don’t be bothered by all that—or if you are, let us know where she is and we’ll take her away so that she won't bother you anymore!”  

Mai rolled her eyes. This wasn’t going to work. Nobody did anything for anybody just because they asked nicely and said please prettily. She went towards Ty Lee who was still babbling to the spirit, and stopped when the fog roiled thickly between them, completely hiding Ty Lee from sight.  

Mai couldn’t hear Ty Lee anymore either.  

Something like fear curdled in her belly as Mai willed her eyes to be keener as she peered round and round, squinting into the fog. “Ty Lee?” 

Her hand went to the old place where her knives should be. Her body still didn't remember that they weren't there, that Azula had let them rust at the bottom of the ocean. She flexed her hands against her thigh as she raised her head high, chin jutting forward as she followed Ty Lee’s footsteps. Or what she thought were her footsteps. It was hard to be sure of anything in this place. 

“What are you doing?” came a far too familiar voice, slick with malice and hard with cruelty. 

“Rescuing my silly friend,” Mai said. She stared out the corner of her eye, saw Azula in her regalia, no longer wearing the rag thin clothes she had been wearing earlier. A golden plume of fire graced her top-knot. "Aren't you bored pretending to be Azula when I know you're not her?" 

The Azula in the fog shifted, dissipating and then solidifying terrifyingly close to Mai. She stopped short. The spirit looked real, but it wasn't Azula. It wasn't. Azula didn't wear her hair like that anymore. Azula was missing. But still, Mai wished she had her knives, even though they wouldn't have been able to cut through the fog.

“Why would you want to rescue her?” Azula sounded bored, and Mai wondered if she had always sounded like that or if one had copied the other. Then Azula smiled that sickening smile, the one that showed all her teeth. “Doesn’t she deserve what she gets?” 

“Because she’s my friend,” Mai said.  

The spirit drifted so that she was behind Mai’s shoulder, her breath cloyingly close to her ear. “She doesn’t love you like she loves me. She’ll always choose me because she wants to be me, just like you wanted to be me.” She shifted until she was in front of Mai, her arms folded as she stared down at her. “Everybody wants to be me but nobody can.” 

A frown flickered for a moment over Mai’s features before she schooled herself, before she forced herself to remain calm. “You’re wrong.” Ty Lee had already chosen Mai over Azula, or maybe she had only stopped Azula because she knew that Mai could have killed her, and she couldn’t have that because she was so in love with her. 

Mai hated herself for even thinking that as she brushed through Azula like she was mist. The spirit dissipated and reformed itself again in front of Mai. Laughing like Azula, the spirit pushed hard against Mai's chest, and she reeled backwards out of the fog and into the Fire Nation palace when she was still just a child.

It was before Azula had burned the apple on her head, and Zuko had sent them both tumbling into the fountain. It was when Mai had bumped into Azula because she had been too busy watching Zuko walking with his beautiful, kind mother. Mai had slipped, and fallen in the wet grass, and Azula's shadow stretched over her.  "Maybe you should watch where you're going," Azula had said. 

"I'll be more careful next time."

“You like him,” Azula sing-songed as she saw that Mai was still watching Zuko. Her voice dropped into a loud whisper. “He likes you too.”  

Mai averted her gaze and ignored Azula, but Azula was impossible to ignore as she once more stepped in front of Mai. The grass smelled green as Azula crushed the blades beneath her feet. 

“You know that nothing can come of this.” Azula almost sounded sad, almost sounded as if she cared. She shifted so that she sat beside Mai, so that she too could watch Zuko and Ursa wander in the garden. Their gazes were parallel and they sat in silence.  

Mai looked at her lap.  

“He really is his mother's son, isn't he? Though he's supposed to be my father's heir,” Azula said. “Sometimes I wonder if Zuko would make a strong Firelord. What do you think, Mai?" 

“Whatever you say," Mai said, her voice sullen. She said it immediately, by rote, and it wasn't until the silence hung between them that Mai understood what Azula had said. Zuko could not be Firelord, unless Ozai were Firelord, which would not happen because when Azulon passed, Iroh would become Firelord, and then Azula's cousin after him. Mai stole a glance at Azula. But she stared only forward, watching Zuko and Ursa together. They were laughing and smiling. They were happy. Mai wondered what that felt like. 

“I know that your parents are thrilled that we’re friends,” Azula said. “Why wouldn’t they? I’m an excellent friend, and so is my father. It's very likely that when my father is Firelord, he could do good things for your father, maybe even letting him be the governor of an Earth Kingdom city if he proves himself. That would be very exciting for you and your family, wouldn’t it?”  

Mai swallowed, her body tensing like she needed to defend herself, but she was with her friend, the Princess Azula, and they were sitting in the grass under the lychee trees, and there were bees in the air. It was peaceful. There should have been do danger here. And never before had they discussed the political possibilities of their friendship because Mai had never taken advantage of it--she had never asked anything of Azula for her parents, ever.  

“I’m going to tell you a secret, Mai,” Azula said, her voice soft. 

“I don’t want your secrets.” Mai kept her head down. She fidgeted with the grass, plucking blades of it and knotting them around her finger. “Keep them. Isn’t that what you’re always telling us?” 

Azula’s voice was in her ear. “But this is one that I want to give to you. Something that will make you very grateful that you’re my friend. Because you see, Mai, one day I’m going to be Firelord.” Mai’s head jerked up, and she felt cold under the hot sun. First she had claimed that her father would be Firelord even though there was another before him, and now she was talking about taking his place even though Zuko was literally right there in front of her, eating lychee fruit, staining his fingers and his mouth. Sickness slithered through her. 

“Zuko doesn’t have to be out of the picture when I’m Firelord,” Azula was saying. “But, if he’s not the heir, he can marry whatever high ranking Fire Nation girl he wants.” Azula met Mai’s eyes and smiled. “Someone like you, perhaps, if your father continues his upward climb. Wouldn’t you like that, Mai?” 

Mai held herself very still as Azula rose to her feet, brushing bits of grass from her clothes. Her fingers curled in the dirt as Azula stared down at her, hands clasped behind her back. “Well?” she asked. “Doesn’t the prospect I’ve described please you? Isn’t it something you want to happen?” Her features turned cruel, as they so frequently did these days. 

Mai nodded. “Of course, Princess Azula. It would make me very happy.” 

“You should meet up with Zuzu later,” Azula said, as she turned away, leaving Mai in sunshine so bright she had to blink against it. “You should have fun together, if that’s something you know how to do.” 

Then she was gone, and Mai was truly alone. She licked her dry lips and felt nauseous, sick to her stomach, as she rose unsteadily to her feet and found herself once more in the spirit world. 

It had just been a memory, that was all, and Azula in her Firelord regalia was nowhere to be found. 

She was just as alone now as she had been then. Zuko was just as far away now as he had been then. 

Mai’s lips twitched against her teeth as she stumbled through the fog with no sign of Ty Lee or Azula to guide her way. 

Finally, limbs aching, she sat down and hid her face in her knees. She wondered if Zuko had heard what had happened and if he was on his way to help her, or if he would do the honorable thing and rule the nation. 

It wouldn’t be the first time he had left her behind for honor. 

It was one of the things that she admired about him, that she loved about him. 

At least, that’s what she told herself as she shivered in the fog, rising only when she saw a pink light glimmering somewhere in the distance. 


	8. Hey There, Sweet Sugar Cakes. How You Liking This Spiritual Journey?

“Won’t you help us?” Ty Lee pleaded, her hands clasped together as she smiled at the fog entwined around the legs of all the wandering figures. “I don’t know what these people are doing here, but I’m sure that we don’t belong here. We need to return home to our families! Azula needs to restore her bending and her honor but after she’s done doing that she’ll want to see her brother again and her mom, if she’s even alive. And then there’s Suki too—I won’t imagine that she’s worried about us, but I’m sure that losing us on such an important mission would upset her. She’s a leader, you see, she keeps her people safe and I’m her people now—at least I think I am.” Ty Lee glanced down at her faded, travel stained garments. They weren’t remotely similar to the Kyoshi garb she had warn before, but she assumed the Spirit world would be able to divine the truth of what she said. “And, how could I forget, Azula was on a very important mission to return ancient water bending scrolls to Katara. You can’t just keep us here!” She stamped her foot to punctuate the urgency of their situation and waited for it to respond.

The fog did not answer. The spirit was silent and simply twined itself around her ankles for her troubles. Ty Lee sagged, her breath shallow in her throat, her shoulders hunched before she straightened and smoothed her clothes. She turned back towards Mai. “You were right! I hope you’re happy! But I forgot—“ she stood on tiptoes, fists clenched at her thighs—“you’re never happy!” She rubbed her eyes with her knuckles, and waited for Mai to respond with her dismal, gloomy sighs but there was only silence.

Ty Lee glanced up, peered around. “Mai? Where are you?”

Her throat dried, and she swallowed uneasily through the thickening fog. They had lost each other. The thread had broken and she had released Mai’s hand, expecting that Mai would keep her in sight and follow her. But of course Mai wouldn’t go after her. She didn’t go after anybody.

Well, except for Zuko.

Ty Lee chewed her lip, circling slowly until she was dizzy. She needed to lie down, but she shouldn’t. She had to keep going. She had to find them!

But slowly her knees bent until she was on the cool ground. Her skin was flushed hot, her pulse a rapid skitter of beats scudding under her flesh.

Someone came towards her, and she saw the red boots striped with gold that Azula favored. Ty Lee’s gaze followed the boots up towards the red swoops of cloth looped against her thighs and girdled at her waist, to her folded arms, to Azula’s face peering down at her, with that cold sneer and those colder eyes.

It was the old Azula, not the new Azula that journeyed with them. This Azula’s hair was perfectly in place. This Azula had no hint of weakness about her. This Azula had never cried, had never groveled on her knees.

This was the Azula that had burned the nets and caused the stampede. Ty Lee shrank from the Azula that towered over her.

“Stop this, Ty Lee, and get up.” She bent at the waist, her neck graceful, her back a smooth curved line. “Don’t make me drag you to your feet,” Princess Azula said softly.

Ty Lee didn’t need to be told twice. She didn’t need to be told twice to do anything.

She scrambled to her feet, and when she found her balance, they were not in the fog, but in the palace, and she was alone with Azula, a different Azula than the one who had commanded her to stand.

This was after Prince Zuko had returned home, but before he had abandoned them again for the Avatar. It was before Ty Lee had struck Azula to stop her from hurting Mai.

Ty Lee remembered this day, even though she had tried so hard to forget it. They had been practicing their tumbling in the grass, and Ty Lee was still better at it than Azula, flitting and flighty in her rope-walking slippers, twisting in the air like it was more familiar to her than ground.

Azula struggled to follow after, and she missed her landing, falling to the ground with a dull thud that had made Ty Lee’s heart scud against her chest because Azula was perfect—no one was supposed to be better than her.

Azula’s legs were splayed in front of her, her knees slightly bent, and she made no move to get up. “Are you just going to stand there?” Azula had asked, as she leaned back on her elbows. “Or are you going to help me up?”

“No, Princess Azula,” Ty Lee said as she hastened towards her. She wasn’t like Mai. She didn’t need to be told over and over. She knew the rules, she knew how to play whatever game Azula had in mind.

She held out her hand, and Azula waited a few moments before she took it. But instead of allowing herself to be pulled to her feet, she wrenched Ty Lee down so she tumbled into Azula’s lap, falling against her thighs and between her spread knees. Ty Lee used her arms to brace herself against the ground, so she would not touch Azula with her weight.

Her limbs framed Azula’s torso so closely she could feel the soft fabric whispering against her skin, and when she lifted her face to gasp out an apology for being so clumsy, the words died on her lips to see Azula so close to her. Her hair had come loose during their exertions, and it framed her face softly. She was so beautiful--she was always so beautiful, no matter how cruel she became.

Ty Lee made to pull away, but Azula pressed her knees around her rib cage, and she stilled herself.

Azula pulled at Ty Lee’s braid, letting it run through her fingers as if she were examining each plait. “Hmmm,” she said as she let her legs relax so she was no longer holding Ty Lee in place.

“What is it, Princess Azula?” Ty Lee said, still holding herself so that Azula would not have to bear her weight, so that they would not touch. She knew that if she tried to extricate herself that Azula would only catch her again. She could not stand until Azula let her.

Azula twined Ty Lee’s braid around her wrist. “What am I to you?”

Ty Lee found it difficult to think this close to Azula, who always possessed a commanding presence even when she was sitting on the grass after what she would describe as a humiliating defeat. And she wasn’t sure what Azula was to her now that their school days were over. They had done so much together, with Azula at their head, Mai and Ty Lee flanking her, continuing to prop her up as they dominated the school yard. But sometimes, it was like Azula wasn’t always that person, as if there was a girl who was just as young as them hidden somewhere deep inside. There were times, like now, that Ty Lee thought she could tease her out of that hiding place, and Ty Lee felt she would never love a girl as hard as she loved Azula, that part of her she kept so carefully hidden. “I think that you’re the most beautiful, smartest, perfect girl in the world.” She eyed the way that Azula was still playing with her braid—how she could have pulled until it hurt, and how she didn’t.

“You’re right about that,” Azula said as she stopped winding the braid around her wrist. She played with the lengths of it, and Ty Lee imagined, for a moment, sitting in the same chair that Azula used, the water running through her hair, unbound, and Azula combing it through the water with the golden royal combs. Her cheeks flushed bright red at the very thought.

Presumptuous of her, so presumptuous. That would never happen. Shame burned through her for even thinking of it. And yet—she looked up under her eyelashes at Azula’s delicate wrist and her long fingers and she imagined them holding the comb even as Azula unwound her long braid from her wrist and began to unbraid Ty Lee’s hair with the same nimble fingers that shot blue fire and sparked bright lightening.

Ty Lee’s arms trembled as she struggled to hold herself from Azula.

Azula noticed. “Are you comfortable?” Her fingers caught on a snarl, seeming not to notice that they were almost touching, that Ty Lee’s strength was truly being tested, and that when she could hold herself no longer, she would collapse right into Azula, bearing them both to the ground, possibly knocking the breath out of the Princess, and there would be nothing she could do to catch Azula or herself.

Ty Lee nodded, and Azula smiled at the lie. “I thought so.”

The muscles in Ty Lee’s arms and shoulders burned at the effort to keep herself from falling into Azula, and sweat pricked her skin as Azula worked to unbraid her hair until she reached the band of pink that pulled her hair to the crown of her head. Then she undid that too so that Ty Lee’s hair flowed free and unbound over her shoulders and spilled into the small space between them.

Azula ran her fingers through Ty Lee’s hair, her fingernails scraping at Ty Lee’s scalp, and Ty Lee closed her eyes as Azula whispered, “You do have lovely hair, don’t you, Ty Lee?”

“Not like yours,” Ty Lee said, her words shaking with the effort of holding herself from the princess. She knew that Azula smiled though she could not see it. “Azula—Princess,” she gasped, the words coming out hard and grated.

“Are you tired, Ty Lee?” Azula asked. She stopped playing with Ty Lee hair’s and stretched against the grass, raising her arms, tucking her clasped hands underneath her head to cushion herself against the hard ground. She shifted her legs so that they were under Ty Lee, so that her belly was framed between Ty Lee’s trembling, shuddering arms.

A soft breeze scented with firelilies blew Ty Lee’s hair into her mouth, and Azula reached out to pull the strands from her dry, chapped lips, to tuck them safe behind her ear. Her hand stayed for a moment, her fingers lingering in her hair like a hesitant caress. “I’m not tired,” Ty Lee said.

“It’s okay if you are,” Azula said. She removed her hand, and put it back with the other to support her own head. “You’ve certainly proven your strength and skill to me.”

Ty Lee made to rise to her feet, but Azula said, “You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

Ty Lee’s mind raced. This was different than being pushed down in front of Mai. She was changing the rules. Azula was always cheating, but Ty Lee was quick and sly and she could slip between whatever new rules Azula made up. She met Azula’s gaze and shifted so that her knees would bear her weight instead of her tired arms but Azula moved quickly, striking Ty Lee’s knee with her own so that Ty Lee pitched forward.

Gasping for breath, Ty Lee fell against Azula hard enough that Azula gasped, and they were both very still for a moment, until Ty Lee tried to apologize, tried to rise to her feet, but Azula put her hand against her forehead, pressing her down so that she was pillowed against her stomach.

Ty Lee held very still as she breathed in tandem with Azula, her hair spilled out all around them, Azula’s fingers playing there against her scalp, and Ty Lee realized this was probably the closest she would ever be to Azula, and the thought made her breath catch.

Ty Lee raised her eyes upwards, against the pressure of Azula’s hand, and Azula gazed down at her, a smile curved around her mouth. “You're so clumsy sometimes, Ty Lee. But I don't mind, because this is so nice. Isn’t this nice?” Azula asked. Ty Lee could only nod because it was so much more than nice--it was something stolen, something treasured.

They stayed together like that for a very long time, until they both grew drowsy in the afternoon warmth. Azula’s hand stilled in Ty Lee’s hair, and Ty Lee glanced up to see that her eyes were closed. She looked so peaceful like that, as if she were no longer troubled, as if she were happy. There was so much that Ty Lee wanted to do--to raise herself on her hands so she could gaze down at Azula's face, so she could kiss her forehead as her eyes fluttered open, so she could kiss her mouth if Azula allowed it. But she could not move from under the light weight of Azula's hand, and that was enough, too, because it was more than Ty Lee thought Azula would ever give her. Ty Lee never wanted this time together to end, and in that moment, glazed in sunlight, she imagined it never would. But then they heard Zuko’s feet pounding through the garden paths, and Azula pushed Ty Lee away so hard she was back in the fog, crying out against the spirit and the memories it had shown her.

She fell back to her knees, her arms clenched around her belly as she rocked back and forth. Her long braid fell over her shoulder and she pulled it with her hand until it hurt, because she knew that a moment like that would never happen again, and that it was a lie that had meant nothing because Azula always lied and she manipulated and she used. Only a short time afterwards, Azula had looked at Ty Lee with so much hate, so much rage, and ordered that they be put away so she would never have to see their faces again. Ty Lee's face--the face she had touched and smiled upon and gazed at like there could have been something between them. 

And yet—Ty Lee squeezed her eyes shut.

Mai would call her a stupid girl if she were here, and for a moment, Ty Lee was grateful that she was not, that she could not see this moment, that she had not been there to see what had transpired between the two of them not so long ago.

And maybe she was stupid for wanting this back again, for wanting something from Azula that she would never be able to give her, and that Ty Lee wasn’t even sure she could accept after what had happened at the Boiling Rock.

But she couldn’t stop thinking about it. She couldn’t stop remembering how it had felt, to be so close to Azula as they relaxed in the grass without toppling empires or hunting lost brothers--when it had just been them alone. She couldn’t stop remembering how she had fled when Azula told her she needed to go, how she had re-braided her with shaking hands, and how Azula hadn’t said anything about what had happened, like it had never happened, like it was Ty Lee’s imagination.

And maybe it was her imagination that it had meant something to them both instead of just to her.

“You stupid girl,” she whispered to herself.

Maybe Mai was right--the Azula Ty Lee thought had been hiding had never existed. It was just an act, an act for Ty Lee perhaps, but an act nonetheless.

She had fallen for it, and she was still falling for it, even now. There would be no net, there never was, and Mai would be right again: she would just end up getting hurt.

But Ty Lee couldn’t stay here in the fog, thinking about this. No matter how she felt about Azula, personally, she knew that she couldn’t leave her in the fog. It wouldn’t be the right thing to do, and even if it wasn’t a right thing or a wrong thing to leave her behind, Ty Lee would try to find her anyway because Azula meant something to her. She always would, no matter what.

She would always be in love with her, Ty Lee realized. She just had to give up hope that Azula would love her back one day. She could do that, eventually. She didn’t need someone to love her back. So she forced herself to her feet and, staggering, she called out the names of the friends whom the fog had taken from her.


	9. Treasonous Things

They walked, and Azula tired of walking. She tired of looking at Lu Ten’s back, his squared off shoulders that still looked more like a soldier than anything else about him. 

She scowled at him, behind her mask where he couldn’t see and ask what was wrong, even though the whole world knew something was wrong with her. 

She was a monster, after all. Everyone said so. 

“How do you feel about fathers?” Lu Ten asked without looking over his shoulder as they kept wandering through the tiresome fog. 

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” Azula said. “You might want to explain it to me.”  

“You said that you had no more need of brothers, but what of fathers?” And this time Lu Ten stopped and turned to face her. 

Azula did not spare a single glance but kept walking, their shoulders brushing as she pushed past him. “I already have a father. I’m not like Zuko. I don’t need a second one.” 

She could hear Lu Ten following her. “We heard stories in the army about Ozai, before he became the Firelord.” 

“Obviously it was before he became Firelord if you heard about it. The rabble do love to talk,” Azula said, barely listening, barely paying attention. 

“They said he treated his family shamefully,” Lu Ten said. “They whispered this in secret, of course. They had no wish to risk their own family. Not that I blame them.” 

Azula kept walking, but she was remembering the way her father’s hand had slipped up her mother’s sleeve. She remembered the way her father had advanced on Zuko, bowed to the floor, and his sobbing face. Father had not been moved of course. He was a monster, just like she was. 

“I respected my father,” Azula said, because it was true. Maybe she had even loved him though he had left her behind, even though he had treated her like Zuko. She closed her eyes. She heard his voice: fear is the only way. 

“But did he love you?” Lu Ten asked as he caught up with her, their shoulders brushing again as he passed. 

Azula jerked away from him, refused to look at the way he raised his eyes to her, waiting for her to say something that affirmed or denied. She swallowed around the way her throat swelled into a barren desert. 

“My father would love you as his own,” Lu Ten said, swaggering from her, so confident in his family, in his father, in his uncle. 

Azula laughed at that. She couldn’t help it. “I hate to disappoint you, cousin, but your father hates me. He takes after my mother in that way. He always thought I was a monster, and he’s not wrong. He’s always saying I’m crazy and that I need to go down, and he doesn’t even know about my hallucinations--that I see Mom, and she says things to me that aren't real. He’d probably have plenty to say about those.” She paused, smoothing the ragged ends of her hair as she stared at Lu Ten through the blue spirit mask. “And your father did get his wish: I went down, hard. I lost my father, my throne, my bending. You think he’d be happier about that, but he’s still very grumpy with me, like he’d prefer if I had died or disappeared or something like that, leaving Zuko to be the only child." She pretended to inspect her fingernails as if she didn't have a care in the world. They were short and dirty and she hid her hands behind her back. "Ironic, really, as I had wished that for myself the longest time.” 

Lu Ten’s face tightened, paled in the mellow light of the spirit world. “I don’t believe you. My father loves everything. He never gives up hope. He always gives people second chances.” 

“Well, he didn’t even try before giving up on me.” Azula shrugged, dramatically, her voice sliding through the curved grin of the mask. “According to him, I was a lost cause since I was six, maybe younger.”  

Lu Ten caught her elbow, his grip hard and firm. Azula wrenched herself out of it, and continued through the twisting, curling, treacherous fog. She still looked for Mai and Ty Lee even though they should have left when they realized the thread had broken. She wondered how she was going to meet up with them once she found the way out.   

And that was assuming they just hadn’t left her here to rot. 

“Why do you say that he gave up on you?” Lu Ten said. 

“Because it’s true.” She yawned behind her mask, and she put her hand in front of its carven mouth. “If you want to know the story, I’ll tell you. I wanted Uncle Iroh dead. I wanted you dead. I wanted my brother dead. I wanted my mother dead. What a horrible person I am. Of course your uncle would bear no love for me.” 

“Did you really wish me dead?” he asked in a very small voice, as if they had once been friends a long time ago. 

Azula resumed walking even though she had begun to suspect they were wandering in circles. “You shouldn’t be surprised, cousin. As you can see, it wasn't as if it was personal.”  

“I’m not surprised,” Lu Ten said. “I’m just sad.” 

“Don’t be sad on my account. Your father overheard me speaking my terrible thoughts when he returned after your death. I don’t believe he’s ever forgiven me—though I tried to explain. I just thought it would be the only way.” 

Speaking of that day made her remember how the grass had itched at her belly, how she had rolled over on her back, and stared into the sun, soaking up its warmth, until her vision blurred and she had closed her eyes. As she had knuckled the sun-bleed away, she had seen Zuko, by the turtle-duck pond, and she remembered how he had sat there with mom so often. She had often wondered what they had spoken about as she watched them, always too far away to hear their words but close enough to hear their laughter.  

Mom had never laughed with her.  

Lu Ten’s voice tugged her from the past. “I just can’t believe you really wanted me to die. You were just a kid. You didn’t know what you were saying.” 

The souls crowded them. Too many faces and, even though she was hidden behind her blue mask, Azula found herself shrinking away. “I knew perfectly well what I was saying. I had known for a long time that my father would not be happy unless he sat the throne. How else was he going to get it unless either you or Iroh died?” 

Lu Ten looked at her. 

“Don’t look at me like that,” Azula said. “You’re making such a big deal out of it, like I betrayed you in some way. We weren’t even friends when you left.” 

“Did you mourn me?” Lu Ten said. 

“No.” Azula picked her way forward. “I didn't mourn Grandpa either after what happened. You have to understand Lu Ten, your death was followed very quickly by grandfather Azulon ordering my father to kill Zuko, so that he would also know the same pain as Uncle Iroh. And then, after that, grandfather Azulon also died. It was so unexpected, considering his excellent health.” Her voice twisted. “But I didn't mourn, because I was glad that Father finally had what he wanted, and that meant good things for us, until Zuko ruined everything." That wasn't true, she knew. Father had been the one to send Zuko away. Father had been the one that allowed Zuko to be swayed by his uncle. Father had been the one to drive Zuko away again. Father was the one who had left her behind. It was his fault, but Zuko had been the one to blame for so long that the lie came easy to her. It had always been easier to blame Zuko for his exile. The walls didn't protest or try to explain when she stood in the middle of his empty room and said exactly what she thought of him. He hadn't been there to be angry with her because he was always gone. Gone with Mom, gone with Uncle Iroh, gone with the Avatar. Azula shook her head behind the mask. It didn't matter whose fault any of it was. "Be honest—if our roles were switched, you wouldn’t have mourned me either.” 

His face fell. “I suppose that’s true—but only because I would not have known you. We weren’t friends, as you said.” 

Azula shrugged, and called out for Mai and Ty Lee to fill the empty space, but of course no one answered because Ty Lee loved Mai best, and Mai loved Zuko best, and Mom had loved Zuko best too, and Father had loved himself best of all. Of course there would be no one to answer her as she wandered with the dead.  

She wondered why Katara had not let her die when she had had the chance. It would have been easy. Encase her in ice a little longer. Bend water into her lungs and drown her.  

Azula supposed Katara already had drowned her, in her own way. She’d filled Azula so full of water that she could not bend fire. That’s all she was now: a walking water-logged corpse leaking out her eyes.  

It was easy to just sit down in the middle of the valley. Lu Ten turned back, and sat in front of her. She bent at the waist so her head rested in the cradle of her dirty boots so she would not have to look at him.  

Not even the mask she wore was thick enough to shield herself from him or from the vision of her mother, lingering nearly out of sight. She wore her regal robes, the flame of the fire lady in her hair, and she was so beautiful.  

“Don’t,” she murmured as exhaustion took her, and she fell asleep.  

She woke with the mask still tied to her face. She woke pained with the tediousness of travel. She woke with Ty Lee’s name on her lips, and Mai’s close behind.  

“Are they here?” she asked Lu Ten because there was no one else to ask. 

“I don’t know,” he said, his voice gentle and soft and all the things she hated, all the things that made someone weak, made her weak. “How would I know for I am with you, am I not? For the first time in a long time, I am with my family.” 

Much good that did for either of them.  

She fell asleep again and when she woke up, she was in the palace, so she knew it was a memory and nothing more. It was easy to slip into the past, and Azula knew it was because of the fog, because of the spirit that kept them trapped in their memories, and their fears.   

But the spirit would have to try very hard to keep her trapped. She had no fear because her greatest fears had already come to pass. And as for bad memories, she could handle those as wells.  

“Do your worst,” she called out to the spirit, though her words and voice were lost in the coiling fog. 

As the fog thickened, the memory grew clearer, and she was sneaking through the palace seeking Zuko. It was the darkest and the coldest time of the morning, when it was still night and the promise of dawn seemed far off and false.  

Her hand still hurt from when Ursa had gripped her tight, dragging her from Zuko's room so that she might pry the information Azula knew about Azulon's plans for Zuko. Then she had asked a favor, and Azula had thrilled that her mother would need something from her for once, after telling her that she was wrong after all this time. 

Then there was the knife she had stolen, that fit her hand so well and so comfortably. She had been weak when she had allowed Zuko to take it from her, like he had taken so many other things from her. 

The memory faded and rippled and she was with Ty Lee and her long braid, her bright eyes, her nimble feet. She could not place where they were. Maybe school or the palace. She called for Ty Lee, and Ty Lee said, “I’m here.”  

She was close beside Azula, and her breath smelled of pomegranates as she whispered against Azula’s mouth, and Azula did not bid her to leave, to depart, to go away and never be seen again. 

But Ty Lee left anyway, dissipating like the desert mirages. 

Azula cried out for Ty Lee again as she pressed her hand to the hollow spaces between her ribs, finding the places that Ty Lee had struck so she could not bend. 

From very far away, she could hear Lu Ten, if only barely. “Why do you cry for her so? Do you love her?” 

“Love is for fools,” she said dully, the words coming up her throat as obedient as any well trained thing.  

She had said the same thing to her mother, and she remembered the last time she had seen her. Her mother changed much that night, so much so that Azula had barely recognized her at the end. There was her mother’s soft face, the way her dark hair framed her face, the way she smelled of jasmine. Those things she recognized. 

She recognized the look of frustration as Azula eagerly told her tale because she had only first told Zuko to torment him, to remind him that he wasn't wanted--not like she was. She still remembered how her mother had confided in secret that she had never wanted a second child, and now here was Zuko, wielded as a tool of punishment instead of a son.  

And she had recognized how Mom had loved Zuko so much more than Azula, more than she loved her husband, and more than she loved the Fire Nation.  

What Azula hadn’t recognized was the way her eyes had turned so cold, her mouth so hard as she made plans to save Zuko's life. He should have been there, fighting for his life instead of letting everybody else do it for him.  

“Azulon ordered this?” Ursa had asked of her, hand gripped around Azula’s wrist. 

Azula nodded. “I saw it myself.” She had seen other things too. Had seen her father brought to his knees, had seen how Azulon’s fire touched her father too. That would never happen again once he was the Firelord seated on the fire-rimmed platform. He would be the one to whom people bowed. But she told her mother nothing of those things.

“And you did nothing?” 

Azula shrugged. “I’m warning you, aren’t I?” 

“Only because you were caught!”   

Her mother sounded angry, and Azula said nothing. 

“Do you really care so little for your brother?” 

“Why should I care when you already care so much for him?” Azula said. “You care more than enough for the both of us, I think.” 

Her mother paced the room, corkscrewing tight circles into the carpet as she hid her hands in her sleeves. “The Firelord does not normally take visitors this time of night,” she said softly. “This must be stopped, but we have no time.” 

Azula waited for her mother to dismiss her, to tell her to go, but she did not. Azula watched until her mother stopped her pacing and looked at Azula the same way she had seen herself looking at her friends. The way her gaze leveled out, the way she crept gently towards her, the way she positioned herself at her side so she could run a hand through her beautiful hair, pretending to like her, to care for her.

Azula had done all this and more to Mai and Ty Lee so they’d want to go along with whatever she said, instead of just doing it because she said so or because they were afraid of her. Not that she minded the fear, but it was better when they wanted what she wanted too.

“He would see you, though,” Ursa said as she refastened the ribbon in Azula’s hair so that it was neat and tidy, fresh and new. "You were well named, my love." 

Azula held very still, the ghost of her mother’s fingers still lingering in her skin. A shiver crept over her when her mother pulled briefly away. 

“You impressed him today.” Her mother knelt so that she did not look down on her. Her hands played with the hair fringing Azula’s face. “I was so proud of you today, did you know?’ 

Azula’s eyes widened before narrowing in suspicion. “You said you were proud of Zuko when he embarrassed us all! I heard you!” She tried to tug away, but Ursa caught her by the wrist, gently this time, and guided Azula to stand once more before her. 

“I’m proud of both of you because you are both my children.” She pressed a kiss to Azula’s forehead. “I love you, Azula. Don’t you know?” 

Azula glared at her. “What do you want from me?” 

Her mother stood. “I want you to perform for him, and I want you to impress him with something very special, and make him very, very proud.”  

Azula couldn’t help but smile. “And what will you do?” 

“I will make him tea,” she said. “Ginseng, his favorite.” 

“He’d like that,” Azula said. 

Her mother smiled, but it was a smile that Azula didn’t recognize, one she had not seen before. “I know.” 

Ursa prepared the tea while Azula thought about what she would show Azulon. She had asked for something special, and perhaps now was as good a time as any to show her blue hearted flame. One day, it would be blue all the way through, she knew. 

Once Ursa was ready, she held Azula by the hand as they walked to Ozai's chambers. They whispered for a long time before Ozai nodded, and then he too accompanied them to Grandfather Azulon's quarters. 

Grandfather was not pleased to see them, and was about to turn them away, until Azula pleaded so prettily to show him something special, something no firebender had ever done before. He relented, and Ursa poured the tea as Azula began her set. 

Azula saw him cradle the warm cup in his palms. She watched him take many sips. He almost smiled when he told Ursa that he loved the way she made his tea—just the way he liked it. 

And then, right in the middle of the most complex set Azula knew, when the flame flickered with its blue heart, Azulon fell from his chair, clutching at his heart, gasping for breath. 

Ursa and Ozai rushed to him, their hands fluttering at him as if they would do something to help even as they did absolutely nothing.  

Azula followed, wondering if he had seen her blue fire before he died at their feet. 

The servants came rushing in, and in that moment, she heard her mother say that Firelord Azulon had named Ozai as his successor with his dying words, even though he had said no such thing--had only gasped and choked. They had lied, and Azula stepped back, startled that her mother had been the one to make her father Firelord, after telling her so many times that it was a bad thing to want, to desire. Her hands clammed as they clenched into fists, and she watched her grandfather lay very still on the floor, tea pooling from his open mouth. 

Ursa realized that Azula was looking, and she took her hand, covered her eyes behind her palm, and hurried her down the corridor. “Don’t look,” she said, “ don’t look—“ but Azula pushed her hand away to look some more, to crane her neck around to see the way the body was crumpled on the floor, the cup split in pieces from where it had dropped, and the growing stains on the red carpet. 

Her mother dragged her behind the curtains, squeezing her hands in an iron grip as she knelt once more to look at her.  

There was something wrong with her, Azula thought. There was something wrong with the way her skin was sick and cold and wet. There was something wrong with the way her hands shook as she went to smooth the fringe of hair that framed Azula’s face. There was something wrong with the way she spoke. “You did such a good job, Azula! I loved watching you." Tears slipped from Ursa's eyes. "I’m so sorry you had to see that—it wasn’t supposed to end this way.” Ursa patted her cheek, which she had never done before. “Sleep, and in the morning, everything will be alright, I promise.”  

Azula smiled up at her. “Of course, it will.” Her voice turned sly. “Didn’t you hear what Grandfather said, right before he died? We have everything we could ever want now.”  

Her mother’s face went even paler, and she rose so she could gently push Azula towards her own room. “Sleep, Azula.” 

Azula didn’t go to her room first. First she went to Zuko’s, and then she went to hers. She sat on the broad bed, with her clothes and shoes still on, replaying the scene in her head as she twirled Zuko’s knife through her fingers, over and over, until she had it figured out. 

She wasn’t a stupid girl, not like her mother thought she was. Of course she knew why her mother had taken a sudden interest in her bending and showing it off towards her grandfather. Of course she knew that her mother needed her to distract her grandfather so he wouldn’t suspect a thing about the tea, so that he would be too blinded by Azula to notice the treachery taking place in the shadows.  

Azula wondered how her mother had kept such a steady hand as she offered the poisoned tea to Azulon. 

She wished, suddenly, petulantly, that her mother had told her about the poison instead of pretending that Azula wouldn’t know, wouldn’t have figured it out. She wondered how her mother had come to know such things, and if she had ever intended to teach her what she knew. She wondered how her mother must have felt as she calmly waited for the tea to take its effect as she watched Azula walk through fire.  

It had to be Mom who had done it because Father would never be accepted if the Nation ever found out. She was able to do it because she loved Zuko more than she loved Ozai, more than she loved her family, more than she loved her title, more than she loved anyone or anything—enough that even if she were never to see any of them again, it still would have been worth it.  

Azula fumbled for a pillow smelling of stale lavender and pressed it against her face. She screamed into its soft depths, the thickness muffling the sound so that none could hear her, and none would know what she had done.  

She must have fallen asleep after that because when she woke there was the dull promise of dawn seeping through the curtains. Lightly, like she had seen Ty Lee do, she dropped to the floor, soft and stealthy as she slipped down the halls toward Zuko’s room, clutching his knife in her sweating hands. She did not see her mother taking her tea in her chambers as was her habit. Azula was not surprised by this.

Out of the window, she saw her father by the turtle-duck pond, and she went after him. “Where is she?” she asked.  

“Why do you bother me with this?” he asked in turn with his hands clasped behind his back. “You know your mother will not be returning. You know what we did last night.” 

Azula feigned ignorance. “I don’t understand,” she said. “I’m only a little girl. I was showing off for Grandpa, and then he fell down and didn’t get up again. And now Mom is gone too, and I don’t know where!” She began to fret, summoning up the tears that once would have fooled him. 

Finally, her father deigned to look upon her. “You’re embarrassing yourself, Azula. You know what happened last night. You know your part, and you know the punishment for treachery. You know what has happened to your mother. Now run along, and leave me in peace.” 

She scowled at him as he turned his back on her. Was this her thanks? But perhaps it was just so much to take in—perhaps he would thank her properly when it wasn’t so new and so raw and so terrible. Then he would tell her everything that had happened after Mom had sent her away. 

She returned to the palace and flipped Zuko’s knife as she lurked in the shadows. She thought about how much Mai would like this knife. She slashed the air, and hid herself when she heard Zuko come running down the halls, calling and crying for Mom. 

She stepped in front of him, startling him only a little bit. “Last night, Grandpa passed away.” 

“Not funny, Azula. You’re sick. And I want my knife back now.” 

He was right about one thing, she thought, as he tried to take the knife from her, just like he tried to make her feel small and guilty and sick of all the things she’d done.  

It wasn’t funny.  

“Who’s going to make me?’ she asked, voice thick with the taunt of it, the empty promise of it, the threat of it. “Mom?” But she was gone, and she was never going to come back and tell Azula all the things she wanted to know, and in that moment of stillness, Zuko took the knife and ran from her, and she followed him, but she tripped over her feet in the fog of lost souls, and it wrenched her from the memory. 

She fell to her knees, her hands catching her so badly the joints jarred and pained her horribly.  

Lu Ten reached down to help her up, and she jerked away from him again. He squatted beside her, his wrists dangling from his knees, as he watched her silently. 

“Don’t look at me.” Her voice was thick and sullen. She could feel his gaze on her as steady and unyielding as Zuko’s and Katara’s stares after they had defeated her, chained her to her knees to a grate.  

“I saw your memories in the fog,” Lu Ten said.  

When she glanced up at him through the slits in her mask, she saw that he wasn’t looking at her, but somewhere else, somewhere vague and far off, something for his eyes and his alone. 

“I know that I’m a monster,” Azula said abruptly. “Please tell me something I don’t know.” 

“That’s not what I was going to say,” Lu Ten said. “I was going to say that your parents shouldn’t have asked you to do what you did. They should have left you out of it.” 

Azula sniffed at him, and did not respond. Of course they should have asked her. She was the only one that could have granted them an audience before Ozai would need to kill Zuko. Who else were they going to ask? 

Lu Ten, when he saw that she was not going to be getting up, laid down beside her, stretching to his full length as he cushioned his head on his palms. He looked like he should have been relaxing on a beach instead of trapped here in this ghastly place. 

“Did anybody ever tell you how I died?” Lu Ten asked. A shadow passed over his face, and Azula shook her head. 

“It was quite quick,” he said. “A rock fell on my head and that was it. Not very noble. Not very daring. Bad luck, really. I was so angry at my father for the longest time. He led the armies, but didn’t pay the price.” 

Azula rolled her eyes. “Leaders aren’t supposed to be on the front lines. How are they going to lead if they only see what’s in front of them?” 

Lu Ten laughed. “I see your point but all I could think about were the friends who had gone before me. I grieved for them so much until I couldn’t grieve anymore. When reports of another death came I only nodded and shined my boots and sharpened my sword, knowing I would never see them again even though we had to keep going on, even though we had to keep trying to survive. And then, I was that poor soldier boy who did not come marching home, and I was so angry because I wanted to come home. I wanted to see my family again. I wanted to see Aunt Ursa and my cousins again.” He looked at her before his eyes drifted again to the horizon that lingered on the edge of the fog. 

“If you keep going you might make me cry,” Azula said drily.  

“I was so angry,” he said as if he hadn’t heard her. “I wanted to ask my father how he could do that to me. How he could use me as canon fodder. Was I just some weapon for them to use as they pleased, or was I their son?” 

“You should have this conversation with Zuko instead of me,” Azula said. “You want to know why Zuko was burned, why my father challenged him to an agni kai when he was just a boy? Because Zuko spoke out against sacrificing a cohort of new soldiers who barely knew what they were doing.” She scoffed as she shook her head. “They knew what they became when they joined the army. It was their choice to join.” 

“Perhaps,” Lu Ten said. “But what does it mean when they march us off to wars we can’t win, march us off to wars where we shouldn’t win?” 

Like being sent off to find an Avatar who probably didn’t exist, or to fetch home a wayward son? “It’s funny that you’re only saying all this now. You know it was your father who marched you off to war. You want to pretend that he’s any different than my father but he’s not. They’re the same. They both sent us away.” 

“My father isn’t like that anymore,” Lu Ten said.  

“You don’t even know him. You’ve been dead for too long.” She drew her legs against her chest, hugging her shins. Her blue-masked cheek rested against her knees, and she wondered if her father was in the Earth Kingdom yet, waiting judgment.  

Maybe she would never see him again. 

Was she orphaned?  

She was being pathetic and stupid, so she scrambled to her feet. “We need to find the way out so we can get Mai and Ty Lee out of here,” she said. 

Lu Ten looked up at her with his lazy eyes. They were his father’s eyes. “Why don’t you just signal to them with a jet of fire or something? They wouldn’t be able to miss that.”  

“Because I can’t,” Azula said. “I’ve lost my bending. Haven’t you been listening?” 

Lu Ten got to his feet, smooth and graceful like he wasn’t dead, and peered into the fog. “We could try to keep shouting their names, I suppose. But it hasn’t done much good. Come on,” he said, “try to bend.” 

“I think I’d know if it had come back,” Azula said. “I knew when it had left me, after all.” 

“Just try,” Lu Ten said. He reached for her, untying her mask and pressing his thumb against her forehead. “You didn’t even know you had this, I expect. I’ve been watching it grow under that silly mask of yours for the past few days.” 

“What are you talking about?”  

Lu Ten drew his sword and held the bright blade in front of her. She leaned towards it so she could better see her reflection. There was a tattooed eye rising red and high in the center of her brow. Wisps of hair blew across it even though there was no wind. 

Her mouth twisted. “What is this?” she asked. She tried to rub it off, but it stayed and her hand came away clean. “I didn’t get this on my own.” 

“Perhaps you have always had it,” Lu Ten said, sheathing his sword again, “and it is only becoming apparent in the spirit world. Or perhaps you grew it when you lost your face. Stranger things have happened here, after all.” 

She patted her fingers against her skin where the eye had grown. She couldn’t even feel it. It was just her skin, but not anymore. 

“Surely you recognize it,” Lu Ten said, very patiently.  

“Of course, I recognize what it is. It’s what the combustion benders use to focus their bending,” Azula said. “But, as I’ve said before, I can’t bend, and I’ve never been able to combustion bend. Not that I would want to. They have no control. They're sloppy and careless.” 

“Just try.” Lu Ten looked at her encouragingly. “What’s the worst that could happen?” 

“I could blow myself up,” Azula said, but even so she was falling into the familiar stance that had once come so easily to her, breathing deeply so that her breath would power whatever fire she found.  

Nothing happened, just like always.  

“I told you so,” she said, the familiar sneer coming to her lips as she brushed past him.  

“Azula, wait!” Lu Ten called.  

So she waited, and he came to stand beside her, resting his hands on her shoulders and rotating her so she faced the direction in which he pointed. 

“Isn’t that a flash of pink?” 


	10. It's Not Easy Being Good

Azula didn’t hesitate. She sprinted past Lu Ten toward that smudge of color in the dull greyness of the fog, and he grabbed onto her wrist as she swept past him. They clung to each other’s hands so that they would not become separated, and kept their eyes fixed on the bright spot of pink. 

The color rose, higher, as if it were drifting upwards, and Azula redoubled her pace. As they approached, she saw the vague, shadowy outlines of a tree and she knew that it had to be Ty Lee, that she had to be climbing it, like some kind of firefly.  

Ty Lee should have stayed on the edge. She should have walked the other direction. She shouldn’t have come down here. 

They stopped at the base of the tree. Azula leaned against her knees, panting, but Lu Ten was unaffected because he was dead. He shaded his eyes and peered upwards. 

“She’s very high,” he said. “The tree won’t be able to support her weight for much longer.” 

“If I call out to her I might distract her, and she will fall anyway,” Azula said, joining Lu Ten, mirroring him as she looked upwards. “What is she doing!”  

She looked at the tree. It was thick, gnarled. Old. She put her hand on the trunk, fingers finding the crevices in the bark. It crumbled in her hand, gritting into her skin, and she scowled at her palm as she wiped herself clean on her trousers. She could climb it though—even if it was disgusting to the touch. Even if it would tear her hand open. 

“Don’t even think about it,” Lu Ten said. “What are you going to do but make it even harder for the both of you to get down.”  

"You don't know what I'm thinking," Azula snapped as she paced around the tree. The ground was hard and rocky. If Ty Lee were to fall, it would hurt or worse. 

“Who are you?” came a voice from the fog, and Azula froze as she recognized Mai.  

“I’m Lu Ten,” he said.  

Azula stayed hidden behind the tree. 

“I once knew a cousin named Lu Ten,” Mai said. “He wasn’t my cousin. Just a cousin of someone I knew. He's dead too, like you.” 

“That’s...interesting,” Lu Ten said.  

“Were you also drawn here by her?” Mai asked. “Ty Lee’s not really wearing pink. Her clothes are just as drab as mine. But I guess she really does have an aura, and I guess it really is pink. But I’m concerned that other spirits will see. You don’t look dangerous, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything.”  

“Oh he’s fine,” Azula said, coming out from under the tree. “Since you forgot to introduce yourself to Lu Ten, this is Mai.” 

Mai did look the worse for wear as she looked up at Azula under the shiny black fringe of her hair. “Of course you would be here.” 

Azula held up her hand where her broken thread was still wound tightly around her finger. “Unfortunately, it snapped during an altercation I had with one of the people here. I’ve been trying to find the way out so I could come back for you. And I thought I told you that you were to leave if I didn’t come back.” 

Mai scowled at her. “Surprise, Azula, you don’t get to tell me what to do anymore.”  

“Friends,” Lu Ten said, “let’s not argue when Ty Lee is still in great danger of falling.”  

Mai stepped toward the tree, lifted her head, and called out in that dull, flat voice of hers, “Ty Lee, you can come down now. We’re reunited. If that means anything. Azula’s still wearing her ugly mask.” 

But the pink light just kept drifting upwards in a spiral pattern.  

“She can’t hear us,” Azula said, frowning.  

“She can’t hear me,” Mai said. “Why don’t you order her around, like you always do? She was always listening to you.” 

Azula scowled at Mai but turned towards Lu Ten. “You’re a spirit. Can’t you go up there and bring her down?” 

Lu Ten shook his head. “I don’t think it works like that,” he said, uncertainly. 

“Of course it would be easier to simply wonder if you could do it or not instead of actually trying to make yourself useful," Azula said. 

“I am trying,” Lu Ten said. “Just because you can’t see doesn’t mean I’m not trying.” 

“Why don’t you try, Azula?” Mai said. “You’re the one who’s not doing anything.” 

“She doesn’t want to scare Ty Lee and cause her to lose her balance,” Lu Ten said. “We talked about it before you joined us.”  

Azula put her palm against the tree again. It felt warm. It felt solid and hard. It felt as if there was a heart inside, pulsing slowly beneath her. “Ty Lee!” she called, and she cringed as she said it too loudly, and it rang from her mouth like a clarion. She remained silent for a moment, and tried again. “Ty Lee, come down here before you fall. I don’t think that Mai could take another disappointment if you weren’t to come down here safely. She'd find a new way to blame it on me—you know she would.” 

But the glimpse of pink grew smaller and smaller.  

“Maybe it’s not her,” Azula said, turning back towards the others. 

“It’s her,” Mai said.  

“How do you know?” 

Mai shrugged. “I just do. You would know too if you cared anything at all for her.” 

Azula looked up again, and called out louder, “If you come on down, we can find the way out together instead of trying to do it by ourselves. Isn't that what you're all about these days? Being a team player, all dressed up nice and pretty in your Kyoshi kimono?” 

There was no answer, and the three figures gathered beneath the tree stared upwards until the pink star completely vanished in the gloom.  

“Look at what you did,” Mai said. “You scared her off.” 

“Ty Lee isn’t scared of me,” Azula said. “None of you have been for a long time, ever since I lost my bending and became absolutely powerless. If people are still scared of me, then it just means they’re cowards who need to get over it.” 

Mai actually trembled beside her. “Or perhaps people are scared of you because some wounds just don’t heal.” 

Lu Ten looked between the two of them. “We should focus on getting Ty Lee back.”  

“So does that mean you’re going to let me climb the tree now?” Mai asked. "Don't you remember that you weren't ever as good at climbing as Ty Lee? You always fell." 

Azula hoisted herself into the lowest hanging branches, and hung from her knees as she looked at both Mai and Lu Ten. Her hair was so long it nearly reached the ground, and she wished she had something to tie it back. “I am going to climb the tree, and I'm not going to fall.”  

"Because you're the most perfect girl in the world?" Mai asked. 

Azula ignored her as she flipped herself upward and began to climb. “Mai, be sure to make a note about the color of my aura if there is one. Maybe we can have Ty Lee compare and tell us which one has the grungiest aura. I probably have you beat, of course, so it wouldn’t be much of a contest.”  

When Mai didn’t answer Azula glanced down and saw that the ground was very far away indeed. But she couldn’t think about that now. She only shook her head and continued the climb until she saw a glimmer of pink. 

The longer she climbed, the brighter the glimmer became, but also the thinner the branches grew. It was very treacherous, climbing, and once a branch snapped beneath her weight. She tumbled downwards until she was able to stop her fall by clutching one of the sturdier limbs with her scratched, raw hands, and she wished that she had Ty Lee’s nimble feet.  

She clung to the tree, closing her eyes against the familiar sting of envy, the jealousy, when it should be the other way around. But there wasn't time for that and, forcing her eyes open, forcing herself to breathe, she climbed a little more carefully, a little more slowly, until, balancing nearly on her toes, she came so close to the pink glow that she was able to see a girl’s figure inside it, and then she was able to see Ty Lee’s profile, her bowed head, her closed eyes, and her long braid.  

“Ty Lee,” Azula said, as she reached towards her. But Ty Lee was still out of reach, and Azula was too afraid that the tree would not be able to bear both their weights. “Ty Lee!” 

Slowly, Ty Lee's eyes opened, and she gazed down at Azula. “What are you doing here, Princess?”  

“Trying to get you to come down. Haven’t you heard us shouting for you?” 

Ty Lee shook her head. Azula noticed then that her eyes were glazed and unfocused, and she wondered if she had been trapped in a memory before Azula had pulled her out of it. 

“I’m in a tree,” Ty Lee said. “Do you remember the trees at the palace? They weren’t big like this one—they were small and tiny, and you wouldn’t let me climb them because they weren't for climbing, you said, they were for decoration.” 

“You would have destroyed them if I had let you," Azula said. 

“Just like you destroyed us,” Ty Lee said. "Just like we were decoration." 

“Why don’t we discuss that when you’re down on the ground,” Azula said. “I don’t know why you climbed so high—it’s dangerous.”  

Ty Lee set her face and made to ease herself down, but then she drew herself up again, tight and trembling. Her aura seemed to dim, and Azula did not think that was a good sign at all. 

“I can’t,” Ty Lee said. “I’m too afraid I’ll fall.” 

“I’ll catch you,” Azula said. “Remember when we used to spot each other when we tumbled in the grass? It will be just like that.” 

Ty Lee glared at her in accusation. “You let me fall almost every time. Sometimes you even pushed me down! You were a mean, Azula! You hurt my feelings almost every day.” 

Azula had nothing to say to that because it was true; she had let Ty Lee fall, and sometimes she had pushed her. “What if I promised that I wouldn’t do that this time? It can be any kind of promise you like, and if that’s still not good enough for you, just remember that this isn’t some childish game. We’re trapped in the spirit world, thousands of feet from the ground. If I were to let you fall, you wouldn’t just climb back to your feet again, pretending to laugh with me.” 

But Ty Lee just shook her head. “That’s not true. Don’t you remember the only time you came to see me was when you wanted something from me? And when I turned you down, you burned the net, set off a stampede of angry animals. If I had fallen, and the net hadn’t burned me, I would have been trampled underfoot. I would have died, and you wouldn't have cared because you've never cared—you've always been so selfish, and I don't know why, I don't know what more I can do.” 

Azula's throat went dry. The branches trembled beneath her weight and she shifted herself, carefully. “Yes, you’re right--I did do all those things. I have done terrible things to many people, but especially to you and Mai, when we were supposed to have been friends. I know there’s nothing I can say to make it better. I know that they can’t be undone or forgotten. But I don’t want to hurt you, Ty Lee, and I don't want to see you get hurt. I know we can’t start over but do you think that we could maybe start to trust each other?” 

Ty Lee put her hands over her eyes and shook her head so that her braid whipped back and forth. “How can I trust you when you always lie?” 

Azula said nothing.  

There was a long stretch of silence between the girls when Ty Lee finally broke it. She peeked at Azula between her fingers. “Why are you still wearing that horrible mask? I can’t tell if you look scary or silly.” 

“I like it,” Azula said. “I’ve already lost my face once, and I don’t want to lose it again.” Which was, she realized, another lie. Because she knew she wouldn’t lose her face unless she went to visit Koh. She wore it because she couldn’t trust her face anymore, just like she couldn’t trust her body when she had first lost her bending. Now, she found herself too frequently on the verge of crying. Now, she could feel herself looking sad when there was no reason to be sad. The mask was the only safe thing.  

“Take it off for me,” Ty Lee said. “I don’t want to talk to that thing.” 

Azula did not want to remove her tenuous grip on the branches, but she did it anyway, unknotting the mask with one hand so that it slipped free and she held it in her grimy fingers. 

Ty Lee clutched at the branches even tighter. “You’ve got the eye on your forehead. Can you bend now?” 

“No,” Azula said. “If I could bend, do you think that I would have climbed this tree, breaking my nails and scraping my skin, when I could have just used firebending to power me up here?” 

Ty Lee considered. “I suppose. Unless you didn’t want us to know that you still didn’t have your bending.” 

“That’s always a possibility,” Azula said, “but I’m not lying when I tell you that I do not have firebending. I have tried to keep my patience with you, Ty Lee, but we need to go. Mai and Lu Ten are waiting for us, and if we don’t come back, Mai is probably going to climb this tree herself and then the three of us will be stuck.”  

“Why are you always trying to order me around,” Ty Lee said. "I'm not your—your--" Ty Lee struggled for the word. "I'm not your servant." 

Azula sighed, exasperated. “We need to get down there, now, and all you’re doing is clinging to the top of this tree while you confront me about all the ways in which I wronged you. We can do it later, when we’re safe.”  

“I probably won’t want to do it later,” Ty Lee said. “I don’t like to think about how you hurt me, I don’t like to talk about this.” She released her grip on the tree and clutched her head. “But this fog brings everything to the surface. It makes everything hurt again, and I can barely think.” She gestured grandly, and Azula’s stood very still, afraid that if too many people moved or shifted the tree would well and truly break beneath them. “Like, I know I came up here for a reason! I know I had a good reason for climbing up this high. But the only thing I can think about is having to decide between you and Mai at the Boiling Rock. You were so angry, you were nothing but rage and teeth. What was I supposed to do, Azula? What was I supposed to do? Every decision was wrong. Every decision meant that we would never be the same, that things could never go back.” 

Azula swore. “My own brother was going to ask the Avatar to take my bending away after he took away my father’s, so what does that tell you?” 

“That I did the right thing,” Ty Lee said, slowly. 

“Yes, you did the right thing.” Azula felt the tree groan beneath her, felt how slippery and sweaty her hands had become. She realized, then, that she was afraid that she was going to fall, and that there was no one who would catch her. “What do you want me to say? If you want me to say that I’m sorry, then I will but it won’t mean anything because it’s just words, it’s just something to say, and I’ve said it before without meaning it so you wouldn’t have any reason to believe me now.”  

Ty Lee said nothing as she stared at Azula. "What did you say?" she whispered.  

“Do we really want to keep Mai waiting?” Azula said, sounding too desperate. “You know how she hates waiting, how bored she gets.” 

Ty Lee nodded, then and again her leg lowered to find the next branch. As Ty Lee shifted downwards, so did Azula, still gazing upward as Ty Lee slowly lowered herself to the same spot where Azula had stood only moments before.  

It was at that moment that the branch splintered, shattering under her weight. Ty Lee screamed as she fell, and Azula grabbed her by the waist, shuddering as she braced her feet against the tree to help bear the extra weight, and then the surreal knowledge moments before it happened that the limb on which she stood was about to break as well. 

They fell together, crashing through the leaves and limbs, smashing the weak tree with their combined weight until Azula slammed into the ground on her back, with Ty Lee toppling onto her stomach a few seconds later.  

Azula couldn’t breathe.  

Mai helped Ty Lee to her feet, and then looked down at Azula. “What took you so long?” 

Azula couldn't speak as Lu Ten bent to help her to her feet. Azula clutched his shoulder as she tried to catch her breath. 

“You look terrible, cousin,” Lu Ten said as he pushed her hair back from her sticky forehead.  

Azula could well imagine that she did. She was certain the fall had cracked several of her ribs, and she was light headed from having her lungs pancaked between the ground and Ty Lee. Amazingly, Azula still had her mask, though it was scuffed and cracked from the fall. With shaking hands, she tied it back over her face. “And now I just look like someone in a mask,” Azula said, though it took all her effort to keep her voice from shaking. 

“You should rest,” Lu Ten said softly. “You should let them know that you are injured.” 

She turned back to Ty Lee and Mai, who were hugging each other. Well, Ty Lee was hugging Mai, and Mai was standing there patiently.  

“Ty Lee, are you alright?” Azula asked. 

“Just a few scrapes and bruises,” Ty Lee said, breaking from Mai and beaming at her. “I feel great!” And then Ty Lee had her arms around Azula, and Azula didn't know what to do with her hands. Ty Lee hugged hard, and Azula was glad the mask hid her pain. 

“I’m glad somebody does,” Mai said. 

"Are you alright?" Ty Lee whispered in Azula's ear. "That was quite a fall!" 

"I'm always fine," Azula said. 

Ty Lee broke away from her, looking at her too seriously until her eyes lit up. “Oh! I also remember why I climbed the tree. It was because I thought I could get above the spirit, which I did! And, I know the way out of here. We’re actually really close to the edge of the valley. We must have just been wandering in circles for however long we’ve been here.” 

“Let’s go, then,” Azula said. “I’m ready to be gone from here. This place is depressing.” 

“You’re telling me,” Ty Lee said. “I could feel my aura growing dimmer and dimmer by the minute.”  

Mai sighed. “The only reason we found you was because we could see your aura glowing even in this dismal place.” 

Ty Lee clapped her hands. “Does that mean that I was the one who saved you all?” 

“I suppose it does,” Lu Ten said. “I’m Lu Ten, Azula’s cousin.” 

“Oh I know all about you,” Ty Lee said. “Azula used to talk about you all the time—“ And then her voice faltered as she remembered just why Azula used to talk about him all the time.  

“Enough talking. Let’s go before we forget the way out,” Mai said. 

Azula nodded. "We should hurry." She took Ty Lee’s hand and reached for Mai’s. “We should hold onto each other. We don’t want to become separated all over again.” 

Mai stepped away from her. “Don’t touch me. I’m still mad at you.”  

“And that’s fine since you feel so strongly about it,” Azula said, “but that doesn’t change the fact that we need to stay together.”  

Mai held onto Ty Lee’s other hand while Lu Ten took hold of Azula’s. It only took them a few minutes for them to find the edge of the valley through the thinning fog. The path winding upwards was narrow, only wide enough for two. Azula walked beside Lu Ten while Ty Lee and Mai walked ahead of them. She looked at Lu Ten as they made their way upwards. Lu Ten was dead so he would not be able to accompany them in the physical world, but she was glad that he was no longer trapped in the fog. What a dreadful place to wander for so many years. 

Clearing her throat, and holding her elbow tight across the place where her ribs ached, she said, “I’ve been banished from Ba Sing Se, but if you like, I suppose I could send a hawk to Uncle Iroh to let him know you're here. Perhaps, he'll want to see you again.”  

“Please don’t do that,” Lu Ten said, his voice quiet. “I’ve made peace with my death, and from what you have told me, so has my father. I am glad for him. I am glad that he has found another son in Zuko.” 

Azula’s face twisted behind the blue wooden cheeks of her mouth. 

“I’m sorry that he did not find a daughter in you,” Lu Ten added.  

Azula tossed her head, even though it hurt to do so. “Oh don’t concern yourself about that. I would only be a disappointment.”  

“Azula—“ Lu Ten said in that regretful voice that Azula had come to dread. 

“I don’t want your pity,” Azula said. “It’s for fools. My relationship with your father is what it is. There’s nothing that can be done about what has passed.” 

Lu Ten smiled at her. “You do realize that you are wearing the mask of a fool, don't you? At the end of the play, the Dragon Emperor forges the love that breaks the curse and defeats the spirit that had cursed him. I always thought that the spirit must have been very foolish to make a curse like that.”  

Azula groaned, partly because remembering that play was groan-worthy, but also because each step was agony. “The Ember Island Players butchered that play. It was so embarrassing, sometimes. But Zuko and I enjoyed them, once when we were kids. We always used to re-enact the duel at the end.” Though, now that she thought of it, she could not remember which parts they had played.  

They were nearing the rising edge of the valley. Mai and Ty Lee had already disappeared over the top. Azula paused, bracing herself against the rock as she tried to find her breath.  

“What will you do now?” Lu Ten asked. 

“I’m going to return the scrolls,” Azula said, “and then I’m going to go home. I don’t think there’s anything more I can do to find our mother. And Zuko will understand. I do not believe he will truly exile me, even though he will be sad that I was unable to find out the truth.” Her father would think him weak, but she was just relieved. 

Lu Ten put his hand on her shoulder. “I am glad you are going home. I’m glad that you are not going to be like me, who died before I ever had a chance.”  

“Not that I deserve to go home,” Azula said. “I’ve lost everything. My father, my brother, my mother, my throne, my title. It’s almost desperate, pitiful to return without bringing something in exchange. But I have nowhere else to go, and I am tired.” 

“I think Zuko will be glad that you are safe,” Lu Ten said. “He won’t care about everything else. You don’t have to earn your place in your own family. At least you shouldn't have to.” 

Azula laughed, the dizzy, crazed laugh made everything seem so far away. “Then you don’t know our family, Lu Ten. With our father, we always needed to earn our place. But Zuko’s not like that anymore, if he ever was.” It had been that way with her mother too, but she was tired of talking about her mother. No one seemed to see her the way she did. And maybe she was wrong about her, but she didn’t think she was.  

They lingered at the top of the ridge as Ty Lee did cartwheels to celebrate being out of the fog, of actually being able to see the world around them instead of wandering lost and alone.  

“At least one good thing has come out of this,” Azula said. “You’re no longer trapped in the fog yourself.”  

Lu Ten put his hand on her shoulder. “I have a secret. I never was lost in the fog.” 

Azula turned towards him. “Don’t lie! We practically stumbled into each other. And you said you were trapped there because of what happened with the Fire Nation.” 

“I was trapped down there once, when I first came here. But I had long since found my way free. But then, years and years later, a strange thing happened. I saw my cousin wandering, and I started to follow her. What was she doing here, I wondered to myself. And then she did something incredibly silly, which was going into the fog of souls of her own volition.” He shook his head, smiling at her. “Of course, I had no choice but to go after you.” 

Azula remained silent as her mouth gaped behind her mask. “That was very generous of you,” she said finally as she bowed to him. “I thank you.” 

“So formal,” Lu Ten said as he messed her hair, and Azula suddenly remembered he had done that when she was very, very young—too young to be annoyed by it, like she was now. Then his eyes shifted to something in the distance, and pointed. “Look—I think the Avatar has come to guide you from this world. Maybe I will see you again—“ and then he was gone. 

Azula lunged for him, but her hands fell through light and shadow. “Wait!” she cried out because maybe the Avatar would have been able to find a way for Lu Ten to come with them. Wasn’t he supposed to be the bridge between their two worlds? 

But he was gone, and all she could do was look where he had pointed. There was the Avatar, a lone figure slowly walking the fields towards them, and then breaking into a run as he caught sight of them. 

“Zuko?” he asked. “How did you get here? Did the fire sages help or—“ and his face fell as Azula took off her mask. 

“I’m sorry to disappoint you, Avatar, but my brother isn’t here” she said. She stared at the mask and imagined her brother's face behind it.   

Aang bowed to her. “Princess Azula, when I last saw your face, it was one of Koh’s. I came to rescue you.” He looked at her more closely. “You do not look well. But that is a really cool eye tattoo! Where’d you get it? The assassin your brother sent after us when we weren’t friends had one like it—he was not so cool. He was actually really scary, like you.” 

Azula rarely felt at a loss for words, but she could not think of what to say when she looked at Aang, at the boy she had once tried to kill. He was younger than her. He was just a kid, really, for all his great deeds. And then she felt anger that they had lectured her about trying to kill him when Zuko, the favorite child, had apparently sent an assassin after him.  

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Aang said. 

But by this time, Mai and Ty Lee had come to them, and spoke before Azula could respond.  

“Have you come to rescue us from the Spirit World?” Mai asked. “I thought once that the Fire Nation was dreadful, and then I thought that Omashu was dismal, but none of them are a match for this awful place.” 

Aang laughed. “Yep! Just follow me! Suki has been beside herself with worry and Zuko wanted to come but he couldn’t—he asked Uncle Iroh to come, but I found out about the spirit portal and decided to keep trying to find you without waiting for him to come all the way from Ba Sing Se. Where were you? I kept trying to find you, and I couldn't until today." He paused, looking slightly chagrined. "And I'm the Avatar!" 

“I’m sure the fog of lost souls had something to do with that,” Mai said. And since Aang wasn’t familiar with that place, Mai and Ty Lee told him all about it. 

"Enough," Azula said. "I just want to get out of here. How are we going to do that?"  

"I'm going to try to guide you to the spirit portal. It's an entrance that allows physical bodies to pass between the worlds. It can only be opened on a solstice, so I wasn't able to come through it myself. I've just meditated myself here. But I think the spirit portal might let you out. C'mon, I'll show you. It's not far."  

They followed him, and they went at a brisk pace even though Azula lagged behind, trying to disguise how hard it was for her to walk and to breathe. 

Eventually, they came to a plain field with a gnarled, hollow tree in its center. Azula wondered what it might hold, but was distracted by the pile of rocks that Aang was walking toward. A soft light glowed from the pile. He told them that it was the portal, and Azula looked down at it with skepticism.  

“So, um,” Aang said, his fingers twiddling, “the weather might be a little bit on the bad side when you exit. But—“ and his face brightened – “Appa will be nearby and there will be warm things and we won’t have to walk to the Southern Water Tribe.” 

“Great,” Mai said. “Let’s go.” 

"This had better work," Azula said, trying to figure out what they would do if it didn't. 

"It will," Aang said as he smiled. "I'll see you on the other side." He vanished from sight and the girls peered at each other. 

Taking a deep breath, the three girls step forward onto the pile of rocks. The rocks shifted into something like water, refracted by the glowing, pulsing light. They slipped deeper into it until they were on their knees in the snow as a blizzard whirled around them.  

Aang was there to greet them, and he helped them to their feet, urging them forward as they bowed against the cold wind knifing through their thin clothes. Aang seemed unaffected by the cold. He wore the same saffron and gold robes he had worn when he had defeated her father. One shoulder was bare, and he was not even shivering. Maybe it was an airbender thing. But still, resentment bit through Azula, and she gritted her teeth as her eyes watered from the sting of the wind, at how Mai and Ty Lee were huddled together for what little warmth remained to them.  

“I would have brought you warm things,” Aang shouted over the howling of the wind, “if I had known that I would find you so quickly.” 

“Oh it’s fine,” she said, even though it hurt, “I’m feeling very comfortable.” 

But, when they made it to Appa, there was gear there, and Aang helped them into the thick, water-proof blanket. Azula huddled on the edge of the saddle, trying to regulate her breathing as she waited for Appa to bring them to the Southern Water Tribe.  

She must have fallen asleep because Ty Lee was shaking her awake, whispering that they were there. Stiff limbed, skin cold except for the hot pain in her ribs, she climbed down from Appa and stumbled in the snow, following Aang as he led them to Katara’s house. Blearily, she remembered about the eye on her forehead, and she pulled at her hair, to hide it. She didn't feel like answering questions about it, especially if people would just assume that she could combustion bend, even though she couldn't--at least not yet. But that wouldn't be the same. She wanted her blue fire back, not something else instead.

Katara waited for them, all in blue.  

Aang ran to her, and they hugged each other before kissing their cheeks. Over Ty Lee's head, Mai and Azula caught each other’s gaze for a moment, rolling their eyes in sync before Mai jerked her head pointedly away, sinking into an even deeper sulking slouch. 

“Suki!” Katara called over her shoulder, and there she was in water tribe gear with Sokka following her. “Aang’s back!” 

Ty Lee broke from between them and rushed towards Suki, throwing her arms around her shoulders, holding her tightly as Suki returned her embrace.  

Azula watched the reunion, trying not to feel the sting of bitterness. Because Ty Lee would surely return with Suki to Kyoshi Island. They would part ways on their return journey and who knew when Azula would see her again. 

But that didn’t matter at all. Ty Lee could do what she wanted to do, and who would stop her? 

“I do hate to interrupt, but do you think it would be possible to get out of the cold?” Azula said. 

Aang looked abashed and Katara nodded as she gestured for them to come inside. 

There was a fire already lit, and Ty Lee and Mai crowded around it, holding out their hands to the heat. It smelled like meat in here, and she saw a rack where there was newly smoked seal flesh. Katara must have been preparing it with salt to preserve it for the upcoming winter months.  

Azula rolled her eyes. She might as well get the whole reason for their journey over with. She turned to look at Katara. She did not look like a warrior now, though she still kept water slung to her side. Sokka stood beside her, his arms folded threateningly, his face glowering as if he had preferred they had never come. 

Well, that made two of them. Still, she stood straight as she could manage, and bowed to them both. “I am Azula, Princess of the Fire Nation,” she said, even though they all knew who she was, but this was official business and thus must be done officially, “daughter of Ursa and Ozai, and sister of Firelord Zuko.” She took a deep breath and fumbled for the scrolls still belted to her waist. Mai turned away from the fire and came to help her with the straps, and then to stand by her side, which surprised Azula so much she almost dropped the scrolls she had been entrusted to return. “My brother told me he found these scrolls in the libraries of the Fire Sages. There are no records of how we obtained them, but Firelord Zuko believes they were stolen in one of the raids.” 

Sokka glared at her. “You mean one of the raids that wiped out our villages, kidnapped our waterbenders, and killed our mom—one of those raids?” Sokka stepped forward, accusing, but Azula could see the hurt etched in his eyes, in the lines of his face. He always bore it there, in plain sight. She had seen it when they had caught her in the walls of the tunnel, when she was tasked with distracting them from her father.  

“Yes,” she said quietly, biting her tongue to keep from saying anything more.  

He snatched them out of her hands and gave them to Katara, who opened the box with shaking fingers. 

Azula wondered then if they hadn’t ever wondered how Uncle Iroh had learned to re-direct lightning. Where else had he learned it but from stolen scrolls like these?  

Katara put the scrolls very carefully on a nearby table. Aang slipped his hand in hers, and squeezed it.  

Azula tried not to stare at those eyes and glared at the furs hung along the back of the hut. “We return these scrolls, along with a promise that we will return all artifacts we find that are not ours.” She said it just like Zuko had written it down for her. 

Beside her, Mai bowed deeply, and Azula followed suit. “Firelord Zuko would also like to extend an open invitation for you and others of the Water Tribes to correspond with him. He knows that the Fire Nation has hurt you very badly, and he will do what is needed to restore what has been lost.” 

“Thank you,” Katara said. “I am sure we will have much to discuss.”  

Katara turned away as if their business was finished, and Azula looked at Mai and Ty Lee only to see them looking expectantly at her, and she remembered there was still more to ask of the Water Tribe after all her grand words. She flushed with shame. “My companions are weary,” Azula said, “and they miss their home. I ask that you grant us safe passage, and a ship, that will be paid for once we return.” 

“We don’t have any money,” Mai explained. “What little we had was lost when we were dragged to the spirit world.” 

“I understand,” Katara said. “We’ve already arranged passage for Suki. If the captain is willing, I am sure you can come with her as she trades regularly with the Fire Nation.” 

Ty Lee clapped her hands. “Thank you so much.”  

She flashed the whole room with a smile like she didn’t know that every single person hated them and that the whole interaction had not gone well. Azula pressed her fingers to her aching head and wondered what Zuko had been thinking sending her instead of just coming himself. At least they liked him. At least they considered him a friend. She was just their enemy.  

“I'll show you your huts until you’re ready to leave in a few days,” Sokka said. 

They followed him and Azula drifted beside Mai. “Why did you help me in there? Are you finally starting to warm up to me again?”  

“No,” Mai said as she shrugged. “But one day, I’m going to be Fire Lady. It felt like the right thing to do. Restoring the Fire Nation’s honor can’t all be Zuko’s responsibility.” 

“Who would have thought,” Azula said. “Mai, taking responsibility, Mai accepting all those boring duties associated with all of that.” She held her hand to her aching side as she tried to laugh. "I guess some things do change." 

Mai’s eyes slid sidewise towards her before re-focusing on Sokka in front of them. “You’re one to talk. You never abandoned us. You never even tried to kill us. You saved our lives a couple of times, even.” She sighed. “If anyone should be pointing and laughing at you, it’s me.” 

“If you say I've changed so much, then why are you still mad at me?" Azula said. 

“You could turn as kind as Aang tomorrow,” Mai said, “and I would not forgive you or want to be your friend. You should leave it alone. You should leave me alone.” 

“If I had left you alone, you’d still be trapped in the spirit world,” Azula said. 

Mai sighed. “This is exactly what I’m talking about.” 

Then she left to join Sokka, Suki, and Ty Lee, while Azula lagged behind. It was not often that she felt tired, or like she needed to lie down, but she felt that way now. Exhaustion carved through her, pain knit her flesh, and it took every part of her concentration to breathe, just breathe.  

The power of a firebender came from the breath, her uncle had told her when he still spoke to her, when she had been young, very young.  

Even if she couldn't bend, she could still be strong, so she focused on breathing through the pain. But it was no use. When they were still a half dozen steps from the hut they were supposed to share (unfortunately), she fainted and collapsed in the snow.


	11. Time to Go Home

“What’s wrong with her?” Ty Lee asked anxiously. 

They had put Azula in water, warmed over the fire. First, it had steamed around her, and then it had faded into something tepid and sickly looking—like Azula herself, Mai thought. Azula looked thin and weak in the water, with her head propped against the rim of the tub, her hair sticking to her neck. 

She didn’t look like the same person. Her hair was tangled and unkempt, and for some reason, Mai noticed the absence of her makeup even more so. It had always made her look so much older than she actually was. Her arms floated at her sides, palms nearly turned upwards. Mai could see the pale spots of her calluses, and how her skin was flaking from the dry, cold weather. 

The eye that had appeared in the spirit world peered through her bangs. It was unblinking, it was staring. It made Mai uncomfortable. 

Katara was bending the water around Azula, and it took on the healing glow, humming rhythmically as Katara guided the water to follow the flow of Azula’s chi. “She has broken several ribs that have not been treated. She hid the pain like an idiot instead of asking for help.”  

That was typical of Azula though. She never asked for help, even when she needed it. Mai shook her head while Ty Lee made small, distressed sounds. 

Katara closed her eyes, concentrating. “I’ve never seen someone’s energy so out of balance—so tied up in knots.” She lowered her arms, and the water became still, barely disturbed by Azula’s breathing. “No wonder she still can’t bend.” 

“So that actually wasn’t a lie,” Mai said.  

Ty Lee batted her elbow, gently. “Don’t be mean.” 

“I’m not. It’s just something I was wondering about.” 

“I’m with Mai on this one,” Sokka said, bending over Azula and glaring pointedly at the eye on her forehead. “No offense, but what better way to kill a bunch of unsuspecting people with a surprise firebending attack?” He posed in an exaggerated firebending stance.  

“Why isn’t she waking up?” Ty Lee said, deliberately turning her back on Sokka.  

Katara shook her head. “I don’t know. She’s burning with fever even though her wounds are not infected. She should be awake but it’s almost like she’s in a coma.” 

Mai glared at Azula. Even now she was still making everything about her. Now they would have to stay here waiting for her to wake up when they could have been on their way. 

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Katara said. “I don’t know what to do.” 

“I have,” Mai said, still staring at Azula, and the way she floated in the water like she was weightless. Like she had no more burdens to bear. She hated looking at her, but she could not turn away. “Not personally, but I’ve heard about it.” 

“When?” Katara asked, putting her hands in Mai’s. “Anything you could tell us would help.” 

“I don’t know much,” Mai said, “because Zuko doesn’t talk about it much. But after he saved Aang’s bison—“ she caught Aang smile at that—“he was afflicted with an illness. He said that Uncle Iroh said his body was in such conflict with himself, because he had acted so differently from how he perceived himself—“ Mai shrugged. "It felt very spiritual. I didn't understand it, and it bored me so I didn't ask more questions. Zuko was fine. He had himself figured out. It didn't matter anymore." 

“That was not helpful, Mai,” said Sokka. 

Ty Lee brightened. “But it was, don’t you see! This is evidence that she’s changing! Why else would she be sick? She acted differently than she expected of herself." Ty Lee put her hand over her chest in an exaggerated gesture of surprise. "She admitted I was right about something—which has never happened in our time together! She didn't abandon us in the fog!" She stopped, shaking her head as she smiled. "I can't believe this is happening—that this is really happening." She looked at Mai, over-eager, over-smiling, and Mai did not understand. It didn't mean anything yet. 

“How did Iroh help him get better?” Katara asked Mai. 

“He didn’t. He got better on his own.” 

Sokka burst out laughing. “I’m guessing this is before he betrayed us to join Azula.” He glanced back at her. “Which, I’m still trying to figure out why we’re taking time to help her? Need I remind you she tried to kill us and actually almost succeeded in killing Aang? She blew up the air temple while we were still inside it!” 

Aang flitted to the edge of the pool and dipped his hand in the water. “I forgive her, Sokka.”  

“You forgive everyone,” Sokka said. 

“I try to,” Aang said, very quietly. “Sometimes it's harder than other times.”  

“She’d tell you not to take it personally,” Mai said. “It’s a war, she’d say. People are supposed to die in wars.”   

“Oh that’s real philosophical.“ Sokka gave everyone a sarcastic thumbs up.   

“Can we talk about what we’re going to do next?” Ty Lee said. “It’s weird, talking about her when she’s right there and she can’t say anything.”  

“That’s a great idea,” Suki said. “I’m sorry, but I don’t want to stay here until she wakes up. I don’t know when she will wake, and I want to go home to Kyoshi Island. I've been away for far too long.”  

Sokka bowed his head, and Ty Lee looked at her, hands clasped beneath her chin. 

“Ty Lee,” Suki said, “you can come or you can stay or you can do whatever you want. Kyoshi Island will always be waiting for you.”  

Ty Lee looked at Azula’s prone body as it floated in the water. Her hair unfurled like ribbons behind her. She looked as if she could be at peace. Maybe. If someone like Azula could ever find peace. 

“I'm staying with her," Ty Lee said. "I think she needs us now, more than ever, and I wouldn't forgive myself if I wasn't there when she woke up." 

Mai sighed. Ty Lee was always so hopeful, and Mai was always not. But she couldn't leave either, she realized as she remembered what she had said to Azula minutes before she had collapsed.  

She had responsibility now for more than just herself. Zuko probably wouldn't mind of she left her behind, but she had made him a promise a long time ago. She couldn't break it by leaving Azula behind. She heaved a long suffering sigh, and prepared herself for the inevitable boredom of waiting for someone to wake up. "I'll also stay." 

Ty Lee flashed her a grateful smile that Mai did not return. 

They lifted Azula from the water and put her on pile of fur and blankets. Ty Lee sat down beside her, and Mai offered to bring back food since they were both hungry again. 

Katara joined Mai. "Azula seems—different," she said.  

Mai nodded.  

"She was not well when I saw her last." 

Mai nodded again, but then stopped even though her feet were cold from the snow. Katara stopped with her, and waited. “I need to tell you something,” Mai said. She had put this off for far too long. And it needed to be said. Mai breathed deeply to prepare herself. She could smell the green noodles in their bone broth from here, and her stomach reminded her that she was still hungry. But that could wait. 

“What is it?” 

Mai swallowed around the lump in her throat. “You saved Zuko, and I never thanked you.” 

“You saved him first, from what I hear.” Katara put her hand in hers. Her mittens were thick, and Mai thought about how hard it would be to throw a knife if she were to wear something similar. “That was really brave of you, standing up to Azula like that.”  

Mai felt whatever affection or warm feelings that had been slowly rising through her turn sour. “Not really,” she said. “It wasn’t brave. It was stupid. It was something that should have happened a long time ago.” 

“But it happened,” Katara said. “That’s all that really matters. She can’t force you to do anything anymore. You’re free of her.”  

Mai looked at the way Katara had her hand in hers. “Azula didn’t force me to do anything. I did a lot of bad things before Azula. I didn’t care about Omashu, and I didn’t think about how wrong it was that we were there. I didn’t even care about the plague when that’s what we thought was happening.” It had been fake, and she wondered if her dad felt as stupid as she did when he realized that pentapox was just something made up. But she could still hear the way she’d offered her father more fireflakes as they had watched the people leave the city, like it was some kind of parade.   

It had been a clever trick, but what if it had been real? 

Katara was laughing. “That was my idea,” she said. “Pentapox. From the little creatures in the sewer?” 

Mai could not hide the full body shudder that roiled through her. “That’s disgusting.”  

“Well there was no other way inside,” Katara said.  

“Right.” She turned back, and entered the main structure where they had been met. The fire was still going, and orange light flickered like something warm and friendly and inviting.  There was the smell of meat and sea weed in the air—shallots and sea prunes. Aang and Sokka and Suki were clustered around it, enjoying each other's company. 

“C’mon, Mai, what’s bothering you? You seem more—down than usual.” 

Mai sat down, and leaned against the cold walls behind her. She thought about how to answer Katara's question, but it was a hard question, and she didn't want to think about it. 

“Mai?” Katara asked again.  

“I don’t know,” Mai said. “I don’t talk about feelings because I don’t have them.”  

“I don’t think that’s true,” Katara said. “But I don’t want to press you either. You don’t need to talk to me about what you’re feeling—or not feeling—if you don’t want to. But know that I’m here for you, alright?” 

Mai nodded, and was about to say something when Chief Hakoda came in with a whirl of wind and snow. A messenger hawk clung to his arm, and he held a parchment in his hand.  

“I have some bad news,” he said.  

Mai exchanged a glance with Katara before both girls rose to their feet.  

“What is it, Dad?” Katara asked. 

Mai recognized the thin thread of fear in her voice.   

“It’s from Firelord Zuko—well, not from him directly, but rather from one of his officials.”  

Mai felt cold as she listened which was to be expected of course. She was in the South Pole. It wasn’t exactly a day at Ember Island.  

“Apparently, the New Ozai Society has made an attack on his life—“ there was a great outcry in the room, but Chief Hokada raised his hand for restraint—“but he survived and is in good health. Zuko didn’t want any news to be sent to you—“ he nodded at Mai—“but they do not feel the same. They are asking you to come home in a show of solidarity for the Firelord. Mai showing her support would be particularly welcome, considering her family’s connections.” 

Mai nodded. That would only work if her family weren’t actually heading up the New Ozai Society, which was something she still suspected. And if they had tried to kill Zuko—she jumped when Katara put her hand in hers. “Does the letter say what happened?”   

Chief Hakoda shook his head. “It doesn’t give any specifics. It looks as if it was written in quite a hurry.”  

Which meant things were bad. It was the only reason why Zuko would refuse to write them, and that his ministers had gone behind his back. Those traitors, she thought dully, and she heard an echo of Azula’s voice in those words. She shook her head. She was grateful that they had gone behind his back, and mad at Zuko for wanting to hide it from them. 

“I will take Mai and Ty Lee to the Fire Nation on Appa,” Aang said. “I should be there as well. We cannot let Ozai or people who share his ideals take the throne. Not after everything.“  

“I’ll send for the Kyoshi Warriors,” Suki said. “The Fire Nation could be rife with traitors. Zuko will need a trustworthy bodyguard.”  

“Well, we’re coming too,” Katara said.  

Sokka raised Suki’s hand in his.  “Sword and fan reunited again!” But then he bowed his head. “Just not the same sword. You’ll always be in my heart, space sword.”  

“That leaves no one to watch Azula while she recovers,” Mai said. 

“Don’t worry about her,” Chief Hokada said. “She can stay here until she recovers or until things calm down over there. I can’t imagine any of us particularly want Azula to be in such a—“ he paused, as if looking for the right word. 

“Mess?” Sokka suggested.  

“I agree,” Mai said. “Azula should be kept as far as possible from this.”  

The New Ozai Society would love to recruit her, even without her bending. Ozai and Azula on their side? People would go over to them just out of fear of what those two would do to them. It was easy to forget they wouldn’t be able to do anything—not now at least. But before—they could have, and the memory of that wasn’t going to just go away anytime soon. 

Azula would join the New Ozai Society. There was no way she wouldn’t--no matter how much she had changed. It was alwas so easy to fall back into familiar patterns. Mai knew this—she would always know it when it came to Azula. 

Also, Azula wouldn’t let her forget if her father was the leader of the New Ozai Society—she could already hear her mocking, scornful voice, What a terrible thing our fathers are, aren’t they, Mai? 

She shook her head, blotting out the noise. She had better things to think about, more urgent things. 

Mai had warned Zuko about the possibility of her father, but had he listened?  

“What are you thinking about?” Katara asked. “You look so far away.”  

“I’m afraid,” Mai said.  

“It’s okay—it’s scary,” Katara said. “I’m afraid too.” 

She shook her head. She wasn’t afraid for Zuko’s life (though she was) but—“I think my father is the head of the society. Azula would say I was being paranoid, delusional, but I don’t think I am. It’s something—“ her voice trailed off. 

“Why would you think that?” 

“Because Azula renamed Omashu as New Ozai before she went to foil your attempts to rescue King Bumi.” She scowled. “My father hated Zuko took away his governorship of New Ozai.”  

Katara nodded. “Oh.” 

“It’s nothing. It’s me being stupid.” Mai hugged herself. “The sooner we make it to the Fire Nation the better.”  

“We leave tomorrow morning,” Aang called out.   

“We’d better get ready then,” Katara said.   

Mai joined Katara as she prepared them for their journey. They packed the blankets, the food, and anything else they might need. “We can’t bring too much,” Katara explained, “because Appa will get tired. So we need to be smart and careful.” 

Mai nodded. She hadn’t had to worry about that before. They always just used their machines that went forward, no matter how much was required of them. 

And they had required much of them. 

After they were done packing, she went back to where Azula was, where Ty Lee was with her. Ty Lee was holding her hand, stroking her skin soothingly as she murmured something to her. She stopped when Mai entered. Her face fell. "What's wrong?"  

Mai told her about the attempt on Zuko's life. Told her how she had to go.  

"Who else is going?" Ty Lee asked. 

"Katara, Sokka, Suki." Mai sighed as she sat down beside Ty Lee. She looked at Azula. She looked at Ty Lee holding Azula's hand. "I was hoping you would come with me." They needed Ty Lee. She was a skilled fighter. They had always been stronger as a team. 

Ty Lee's face crumpled. Mai remembered Boiling Rock, and how Ty Lee had had to choose between Mai or Azula. And this time, it was Mai making her do the choosing instead.  

Ty Lee was silent for a long moment. "I know this important," she finally said. "I know that we can't let Zuko be taken out of the picture. And I know that Azula will want to return home to him whenever she's ready."  

Her face was pale, and Mai wondered if she was really talking herself into the decision to come with them. Ty Lee leaned over and pressed a kiss against Azula's forehead. "I’m sorry, Princess Azula," she whispered. "You'll understand when you wake up. We’re not abandoning you—I'm not abandoning you. But you’re not well, and things are bad. You’ll be safer here, and I promise that I’ll come back for you once we take care of what's going on in the Fire Nation. I know what you’d say. You'd be so angry that they would dare betray their Firelord. You'd want me to go after them, because they're traitors, and I know how you feel about traitors." 

Mai knew exactly how Azula felt about traitors, and she shifted uncomfortably. 

Ty Lee rose after a moment, and looked down at Mai. "I need to pack. Do you mind watching her for me." 

Mai nodded, and Ty Lee left, letting in a cold blast of air. Mai shivered, and she thought, for a moment, that Azula had shivered too. Mai held her breath as she watched Azula again, but there was only the shallow rise and fall of her breath. Her eyes were closed but they flickered, as if they saw fevered dreams. 

Gently, Mai lifted the thick polar-bear fur covering. Her ribs were bandaged, but Mai could see the bruises seeping from under the bandages. It must have happened when she had fallen from the tree. "You should have said something," Mai said.  

She dropped the covers, and stared at Azula. Fever made her skin shine.  

"I wish I could believe," Mai whispered. She knew that Ty Lee was right about some things, but that she could be wrong about other things. Ty Lee was in love with Azula. She would always give her the benefit of the doubt. But Mai wasn't like that. Someone had to make sure that they weren't being fooled again that Azula might care for them. She still remembered how it felt when Azula had noticed her, had welcomed her. Mai missed that. She wanted it back. But that was the past, and it hadn't been real. It had just been a lie. It had always been a lie.  

Mai picked up Azula's hand. She did not hold it, but she placed her fingers over her wrist, and listened to the thin, thready beat of her heart. "You're going to be fine," Mai said, as she put it down again. "You're always fine." 

Ty Lee joined her, and they slept on either side of Azula. They left in the morning at an obscenely early time when it was still dark, when the moon was hidden by clouds. It was cold, and Mai huddled in her polar bear dog skin as she climbed up on Appa’s back. With a quiet yip yip, they took off into the sky. 

First, they went to Kyoshi Island so that Suki and Ty Lee could prepare the other Kyoshi Warriors to join them. It took another several weeks to reach the Fire Nation, and when they did, Zuko was there to meet them personally. His arm was in a sling, but otherwise he seemed fine. He greeted Aang first, while Mai stood back and watched.  

It had been so long since she had seen him. He looked tired, but happy, as he smiled at Aang, and then smiled at her as she went to him. She hugged him, she kissed him, she said, “I missed you,” into his ear as her fingers curled into his robe.  

He was not wearing the Fire Nation blaze that would have distinguished him as the Firelord. It would have been easy to mistake him for one of them, for someone who was just a good friend, instead of someone who had to make the hard choices.  

Mai knew she should return home, to greet her family, to see Tom-Tom again, but she was afraid to see her father. She did not interrupt when, at the demands of Sokka and Katara, Zuko immediately told them what had happened. He had been walking, he had been attacked by a band of masked men who had declared their allegiance to Ozai. He had beaten them off, but not without injury. Sokka had been indignant, demanding where his retinue had been, asking if he needed to whip them into shape, but Zuko had laughed, saying he had been alone. 

Alone? Mai frowned as she listened.  

Sokka must have felt the same. “You were what!?” he shouted, his eyes bugged wide, the vein in his neck twitching. He put his arm around Zuko’s shoulder, the side that wasn’t injured, and said, “Buddy, you’re the Firelord. You’re not supposed to be alone.”  

And Sokka was right. Zuko was just the Firelord, not invincible.  

Zuko had just laughed, and then had had them shown to the chambers that had been arranged for them. Mai allowed Zuko to take her by the hand, to take her to his old room, which was still so simple and small, and to the couch where they had spent so much time together.   

They sat together, and there was a pleasant silence between them as Zuko made them both tea. 

“I’m so glad you’re alright, Mai,” Zuko finally said. “When I read Aang’s letter about how you all had been dragged into the spirit world, I was so afraid that you were gone, and that I wouldn’t see you again.” He put his hand in hers, and squeezed. 

Mai looked at his hand over hers. His skin was pockmarked with small scars from his duel with Azula, where hot sparks had landed on his skin. She smoothed her thumb over them.  

“I should have listened to you,” she said finally. “I shouldn’t have come.”  

He put his hand against the curve of her skull and guided her so that she leaned against his chest. She closed her eyes.  

“Was Azula horrible?” he asked. “If she was, I’m sorry.” He kissed the crown of her head. 

“She wasn’t horrible all the time,” Mai said. “That’s why I shouldn’t have come. Because now I think that maybe she could have changed, but I’m still mad at her. She’s in my head, like she always has been.”  

“I know the feeling,” Zuko said. “I think about her all the time. I think about the kind of family, we might have been. I look at Katara and Sokka, and I think, maybe we could have had something like that. Maybe we still could. I won’t give up her.”   

Mai remained silent. “Don’t wait forever, Zuko,” she said. She looked at the sling. “You shouldn’t go out alone. Why weren’t you in the Palanquin? That’s what they’re for.”  

“I’m not going around in that thing anymore. It’s spoiled, and I’m not better than the people who would have to bear me on their shoulders. I’ve walked across the entire breadth of the Earth Kingdom, I think I can manage a relaxing stroll.”  

“Not when people are after you. You told me about them before I left, and you just walk around without any protection.”  

“I won’t do it again, I promise,” Zuko said smiling, as he tried to kiss her cheek. 

She pushed him away. “I’m serious, Zuko. You know the Kyoshi Warriors are coming later, right? Please don’t just leave them behind whenever you want to be alone, at least not until we ruin this New Ozai Society. Did you investigate my father?”  

Zuko sighed. “Your father isn’t involved.”  

“Of course you didn’t.” Mai turned away from him.  

“I did, Mai, but I didn’t find anything. I’m not going to act against him just because he might be involved. If he is we’ll find out eventually. And if he isn’t, then you can be embarrassed about it later.”  

“You can be embarrassed about it later,” Mai said, "when I'm proven right." 

“I don’t think he wants my father back,” Zuko said. “I will refrain from saying I told you so though when it turns out I'm the one who's right about this.”  

Mai relaxed a little more. “You’re wrong. You can’t trust my father.” 

“Maybe you should visit him. Put your mind at ease.”  

Mai smiled. “Only after I’m tired of seeing you.”  

They lapsed into another silence after that, until Mai fell asleep in Zuko’s arms. It had been the first time in months that she had had a sound sleep, and she did not want to wake.


	12. The Creek

Of course she had watched Zuko’s first Agni Kai. Of course she had watched as he had begged and pleaded with his father for mercy. Of course she had stared at her father’s resolute advance, utterly and completely unmoved from his purpose. 

Of course she had watched for how could she not? She had been watching since she was small, only this time it was happening in front of everybody who mattered instead of in private behind some curtain. 

Of course she had smiled because Zuko was weak and always would be though she had tried so hard to make him strong. Even this would not strengthen him because he wasn’t like her. He was too much like his uncle. 

She had seen many other people burn. She had seen her father burn. She had seen her mother burn. And now, she had seen her brother burn. 

One day, she knew, she would burn as well because that was the nature of fire. It consumed and destroyed, but it would not turn on her yet. She had learned her lessons well, and now it was time for Zuko to do the same.  

But when her father had stepped away, when there was only the stench of scorched skin, when there were only the muted whimpers of Zuko, still on his knees, his face twisted, his skin raw and weeping, her father had turned to them, and he issued an edict that Zuko would be banished for refusing to fight. 

Of course she smiled while Zuko smoked at her father's feet. Of course she did.  

“Why, do you carry this ugly memory with you, sweetheart?” Her mother was using the finest tea set she had, the one that Father never used anymore. She poured Azula a cup of ginseng tea and then gave it to her. 

Azula held it in her hand. It was too hot, and she could not drink it yet.  

“It's just a memory. It doesn't mean anything." She had smiled. Her mother would have called her a monster for that if she had been there. But she wasn't, because she had been banished, just like her father had banished Zuko.  

Her mother smiled at her, softly, as she arranged the mooncakes on their little plates even though it was still too early for the festival. Azula had not eaten one for a long time, and her mouth watered. Her mother’s hands were so fine. Her rings were inlaid with jade and bound with gold. She stood, and sat beside Azula on her cushion. She brushed crumbs from her fingertips, and Azula caught them in her hand. 

"Were you happy that your brother had been punished so cruelly?" Her mother curved her fingers so that she might grace her knuckles along Azula's cheek. Her rings left a trail of goosebumps over Azula's skin. 

"It wasn't me," Azula said. "I was the good child, finally. You always preferred Zuko to me, but my father preferred me to Zuko."  

"Oh, my love," Ursa said.  

Azula squeezed her eyes shut as she slumped forwards, over her tea. The steam rose and filled her barely open mouth.  

Ursa’s finger trailed down the center of her back, following the length of her spine. Azula straightened under the guiding presence of her mother's touch. “I had to be perfect—I had to be. If I wasn't, he would see. He would be disappointed.” She slumped again, thinking of how her father had treated her like Zuko, how he had left her behind. If he could do that, then he could have banished her too. She shivered. 

Ursa’s hand pressed against the base of her spine. “Sit up straight, Azula. You’re slouching.” 

“Aren’t you listening,” Azula asked—or tried to, but she could not. 

It was a dream, she realized, because she wasn’t with her mother at all. Her mother was dead. Instead, she had dozed off during a production of the Ember Island Players. They were awful, but she was endeared to them since she had grown up watching their poorly acted plays as a child.   

Her mother had insisted they go until she hadn’t, because she was gone. 

Azula had the theater to herself, of course, because she was Firelord, and she could do as she pleased.  

Blinking the sleep away, she refocused on the play. It was about the end of the One Hundred Year war, when the Avatar, with a pathetically small band, had dared to go against her own father, the previous Firelord, the Phoenix King.  

Foolish boy. 

Her father was not with her, of course. The play was drivel beneath his sensibilities. If he knew she were here, he would be disappointed. 

But he did not know, and her retinue knew the consequences should they betray her.   

It was the final act, when the Avatar and his friends had come to the palace. Her brother was there. Zuzu was played by a pompous fool with even worse hair. Her brother had been nothing like that, of course. 

But it was okay to laugh because it was funny.  

He was supposed to be some buffoon so that everyone would know that his ideals were ridiculous, so that they would not realize the true scar his treachery had left on their family, on their Nation, on their new Empire.   

But of course she laughed. She always laughed when she watched this play. 

The person who was playing her as a girl was too old and wore too much makeup. Her firebending was mere colored ribbons.  

Still, Azula leaned forward in her seat as the cloth comet swung on strings above them. She could feel her wide smile becoming fixed as she watched.  

Zuko was confronting her to steal the throne with an Agni Kai. Azula was more than a match for Zuko as her lightning, a light blue ribbon, swung and struck his heart. It was the same choreography with which she had killed the Avatar, but the Avatar had come back.  

In this play, Zuko had died screaming about his honor, and then was still. In reality, he had said nothing, only groaning in pain, charred clothes smoking while Azula took care of the waterbender that had come with him, Mai and Ty Lee at her side now that it was no longer an Agni Kai. The play didn't even mention that the waterbender had been there.  But Azula knew the truth as she watched the character circle Zuko's body, laughing without stopping, until the curtain closed the scene.  

“Get up,” Azula whispered through her wide smile. “Get up.” She knew the play by heart. Every time she asked Zuko to stand, he never did because he never did anything she asked of him. It was never any different. It never changed because the past was the past. But still, she asked it of him. If he lived, she would ask it of him still. 

The curtain opened to reveal the scene between her father and the Avatar. Her father easily defeated him. He was the Phoenix King with the power of the comet at his command. Nothing, and no one, could stop him. 

Her hands gripped the edges of her seat. Her long fingernails splintered against the hard wood, lined with gold. 

Her heart rabbitted against her chest. Something was wrong, terribly wrong. That wasn't what had happened—once, it had happened differently, hadn't it? Something wet fell from her eyes, and she wiped it hurriedly away, grateful for the dark, grateful that she was by herself. 

But she wasn’t alone.  

In the darkness of the room, something slithered towards her in the dark, on her right hand side. 

It was a blue dragon, coiling its lengths around the empty chairs, its head poised a scant distance from her ear. “Why are you crying?” it whispered with her voice, her coldest voice, her cruelest voice. “You have always taken pleasure in other people’s suffering. Why is now any different?”  

Azula was not afraid of the dragon. She knew it wasn’t real because all the dragons were gone, they had all been killed by the superior firebenders. The first masters, killed by their students just as her father had killed his father. She wondered if she would follow in his footsteps. She wondered if her father feared that she would, and that was why he kept her safely away in the Fire Nation while he ruled from Ba Sing Se. 

On her left another dragon came to her. Red, this time, whiskers hanging from its long snout like it was old and wise. It probably was, if it had been real. It mirrored the other exactly as it spoke to her with Zuko’s voice. “You don’t need to listen to her. She speaks lies. She always lies.” 

Azula closed her eyes. She had not heard Zuko’s voice for such a long time, not since the day of the comet. 

“Firelord Azula,” the blue dragon said, “you don’t need to feel guilty about what happened. They were traitors and enemies all working together against you. They deserved what they got. They should have gotten worse!” 

“A new era of love and kindness is what the Fire Nation needs, it’s what the whole world needs,” the red dragon said. “That includes you, sister.”  

Her mouth twisted. Love. Kindness. Was that why he had jumped in front of the lightning bolt not meant for him, the one she had aimed at her because she knew it would hurt him more? He had ruined everything with his stupid love and his stupid kindness and his stupid honor! 

“That’s his fault isn’t it? He shouldn’t have intervened,” the blue dragon whispered. “You only did what you had to. He should have known better.”   

Azula put her hands over her ears. “He asked for it! What’s the matter, Azula, no lightning today! You want lightning, I’ll give you lightning!” She braced her hands against her knees, panting for breath. Her hair had slid undone out of its top knot, hanging loosely around her face while her Firelord flame clattered behind the chair to the floor.  

“You’re right, Azula. I did taunt you. Perhaps I shouldn’t have done that. I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t realize you would break the rules of the Agni Kai to keep your throne. Perhaps I should have, though.” His voice sounded sad. "You have always been cunning." 

“What would have been the use if I hadn’t cheated? You would have re-directed it at me! I couldn’t survive that not with it powered by the comet. No one taught me how to re-direct lightning!” She put her hands over her rapidly beating heart. She began to hyperventilate. “It seemed like the only thing I could do. It made sense at the time, it seemed like the right thing to do, the only way to win! What would Father say if I lost throne while he conquered Ba Sing Se?” 

It had been easier when it had been the Avatar because he was an enemy who had been hunted by her father and her grandfather and her great grandfather. It was only right that she should hunt him too. It was her legacy. She could still see the calm, detached way she had raised her hand, the empty chasm as the energies collapsed and branched through her body as lightning struck him through the foot, following his blue arrow to his chest. The Avatar’s fall. She had done that. She had secured her father’s Empire. And when Zuko abandoned them, it only made sense. It was the only way to win, to keep what little trust her father had in her when the Avatar came back, not truly dead as she had boasted, as she had claimed. 

She couldn't risk that again. It had been the only way. 

The play's illusion fell apart. She remembered what had happened, what had really happened. How she had still lost everything. The throne. Her father. Her brother. Her bending. Mai and Ty Lee. And it was all her fault. She squeezed her eyes shut as she sobbed.  

The blue dragon lashed out with its long red tongue, striking her cheek. Blood washed with her tears. “Stop this ridiculous display at once! You do not have sob stories like the rest of them.”  

The red dragon rested its head on her shoulder. It said nothing, but she could feel its warm breath against her skin. She turned away from the blue dragon, and looked down at the red one. Its eyes, rimmed in gold and flame, were wet as it looked at her. 

“You blame yourself,” it said. “I’ve blamed myself too for lots of things. Some of them were my fault, but others weren’t.” 

Her breathing turned into hiccups as she wiped her eyes, her nose. The red dragon made it sound so simple, so plain, so easy. But it wasn’t. She couldn’t even tell what she was more upset about—that her brother had lain hurt and unmoving on that stage because of her, or because of the things she had lost. One was worse than the other—she knew that at least.  

“It happened,” the dragon spoke with Zuko’s calm voice. “Accept the reality of the things you have done, and move forward. Do not carry them so they poison you. Forgive yourself. It doesn’t matter if no one else will forgive you—you are only responsible for your own actions, your own choices.”   

“That should be easy for you,” the blue dragon said. “After all, everything comes so easy to you, doesn’t it?” 

"Shut up!” Azula hissed as the blue dragon laughed with her voice.  

“You don’t want to talk anymore—fine! Let’s end this.” 

The dragons braced themselves against her theatre chair. Their mouths opened and flame spewed from their jaws, engulfing Azula entirely as she closed her eyes, flung her hands to her face, and screamed.  

“What are you screaming about, child?” It was her father’s voice. Azula lowered her arms and gazed around her. She was in the palace, in the throne room. It burned blue like it once had so long ago.   

Her father was dressed in the same raiment he had worn when he abandoned her. He must have returned from conquering the Earth Kingdom. With a snap of his fingers, her blue flames disappeared in smoke and ash. Azula fell to her knees and bowed before her father. 

“Where is everyone, Azula? Where are the guards, the servants? Why is this palace empty except for you and me?”   

Why were they gone? She could hardly remember. “Is it so terrible, being alone with me, Father? I have never disappointed you, I have never failed you. I have even kept the Nation safe for your return.” 

“As if I would stay here. Don’t be silly. I will be seating the throne of Ba Sing Se. But where is everyone here, Azula? Don’t make me ask you again.” 

Sinking deeper to her knees so they were pressed hard against her stomach, she whispered, “I banished them. I couldn’t trust them. They were going to betray me just like--” 

He raged at her. He told her she was stupid. He told her that no one with a mind like hers was fit for the throne. He told her that something was wrong with her. That she had failed him because it had taken her so long to deal with the Avatar and her brother, that she had not kept Zuko at home, that she had not stopped Zuko from rescuing war prisoners, that she had not done anything right in a long time, and that’s what he got when he left someone like her in charge of the throne at home.   

“Father, I’ll do better, I’ll—“ 

But he was gone, and she was left in the shadows. She stayed, crouching there, for a long time, waiting for her father to come back, to tell her he didn’t mean it, not all of it at least.  

Then soft hands ran through her hair, tying it back into its top-knot with a bit of red ribbon. “My daughter, my Princess Azula,” her mother whispered, “your hair is always so beautiful.” 

Her mother guided her to her feet, and brought her to her personal chambers. Soft yellow light filled the room from candles dripping wax. Azula sat heavily on the richly carpeted floor, and watched her mother as she prepared her tea.   

“Why are you being nice to me?” she asked. “You never were before.” 

Ursa continued making the tea with a soft clatter of clinking dishes. “I have always loved you, Azula.” 

“It didn’t feel like it.” Azula pulled a cushion from behind her and hugged it tightly over her heart, as she hid her face in its depth. If she were alone, she would scream into this cushion and no one would hear. 

“Alright, if you say so.” Ursa approached and handed a steaming cup of tea to her, but Azula shook her head, and she heard her set it down somewhere near her. “Maybe it’s because you look so sad. Why are you sad, Azula?” Ursa reached for her hand, and smoothed circles into her skin with her thumb. “Who has hurt you so much?” 

“You left,” Azula said. “You didn’t even say goodbye. And then Zuko left with Uncle Iroh. And then he left again. And Mai and Ty Lee left. And then Father left. Everything I did I had done for him, so that he would be proud of me, so he wouldn’t treat me like he did Zuko. I had lost all the others because of things I had done for him, and he left me.” 

“You can’t blame the others for leaving you,” Ursa said. “They didn’t deserve to be treated like that.” 

“I know,” Azula said. “But that doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt.” 

She reached for her tea, but the cup was empty.  

Then she was outside on the grass, gazing up at the sun without blinking, her vision melting in blues and reds. In the distance, she could hear her brother chanting, “Azula always lies, Azula always lies, Azula always lies—“and it went on and on and on, washing over Azula like the truth. 

A shadow fell over her as a figure sat beside her. Her mother’s cool hand covered her eyes, blocking the sun, providing relief from its glare that ached and ached and ached. 

“What did you lie about this time?” Her voice was reproachful like it always was. 

“I don’t know,” Azula said. “I’m a very good liar, and according to anyone you ask, I lie about everything. You have to be more specific.” 

“What lies have you told today?” 

“I told Zuko that his father wanted him back when I had been tasked to bring him home as a prisoner. It was the easiest way. He wouldn't see the lie because he only wanted to come home. That's all he has ever wanted.” And then he left his home again, of his own free will. 

In the background, she could still hear Zuko chanting about how she always lied. 

“What else,” Ursa said as she moved her hand through Azula’s hair. 

“I lied when I told Father that Zuko had killed the Avatar. I didn’t have to do that! I could have taken the credit for myself. Zuko hadn’t done anything for me to do that, only choosing me and our family at the last minute. I did all the hard work. Father would have had no reason to be proud of him. So I lied because Zuko still thought his father could give him his honor back. He didn't even know that the only person who could restore his honor was himself. And if all his newfound glory turned to shame, then it would have served him right for lying to me.” 

“Surely you knew that your father would turn his anger on you for lying about what happened that day?”  

Azula shivered as she remembered her father’s rage—anger at her lie, anger that she had not finished the job and done it right. But how could she have known that Katara was a healer? The Avatar had been dead in her arms—she had seen it. Her eyes squeezed even more against the sun-glare that seeped through her mother’s fingers. “Of course, I knew that father would be angry. Zuko doesn't lie—how could I have known that he had lied?" She paused as Zuko’s chants rang like bells through the courtyard. _Azula always lies!_  

“What else?” Ursa said.  

“That I’m perfect, and beautiful,” Azula said. “I know I’m not. But almost isn’t good enough, and I had to be.” Azula fell silent, and then repeated herself: “I had to be because if I wasn’t then I would be treated like Zuko or like you.”  

“My dear, sweet girl,” Ursa murmured. “That must have been so hard for you. What other lies have you told?” 

“I lied to the blind girl when I told her that I was a purple platypus bear.” 

Her mother laughed softly and Azula smiled just as softly. “That doesn’t count.”  

“I can’t think of anything else,” Azula said after a moment.  

Her mother tapped Azula’s nose. “You lied on the beach. It was after Zuko made the fire burn into embers. You looked into them, and you said that I had said you were a monster, and that I was right.”  

Azula laughed. “No, that was the truth. You said I was a monster, and you were right. Unless you’re saying the lie was that it hurt--” 

“No, Azula.” Ursa fell silent for a moment as she traced the eye that had grown in the center of Azula's forehead, before bending to kiss its center. “I knew that wasn’t a lie, but the lie is that you said your mother was right in what she said.” 

Azula scowled. “No, it wasn’t a lie! You said that to me. You thought that about me, you said that something was wrong with me. I remember that! I am not crazy!”  

“Azula,” Ursa said. “Please, listen to me. Maybe even mothers lie when they are sad and they do not know what to do.” 

“You lied?” Azula sat up, turning to look at her mother properly. Her throat had gone dry, and it was difficult to speak. “You lied, about me?” For the first time, Zuko’s voice had vanished, and there was only silence in this moment between them. 

“I think I did, and I am so sorry. I should never have hurt you like that. I didn’t mean to, but I did.” Ursa cradled Azula’s cheeks in her palms and kissed her again on the forehead. “For so long you were told that you were a monster that you acted like one. But, Azula, the time for lies is over. You cannot lie about your own nature. You are not a monster so you must stop acting like one. No more cruelty, no more selfishness, because I know that is not who you are—I believe in you, in the beautiful princess you still can be. You must accept this truth about yourself, Azula, and act upon it, or you will never find happiness.” 

“I’m like Zuko,” Azula said as she held her mother’s hand against her face. “I’m never happy.”  

Her mother smiled down at her. “Then you will never find peace.”  

The sun rose higher and her mother shimmered like one of those mirages. 

“No, don’t go,” Azula screamed, but Ursa was gone and she was left alone. After a few moments, Azula rose on shaking legs and walked towards the palace, she walked until she entered her father’s throne room, and she walked until she saw herself kneeling before him. 

She remembered this day, she remembered it well, and her knees ached as she looked up at him from her position on the floor. 

“Azula,” Ozai said as he rose from his throne and walked towards her through the fire. “I have called you here today because you are the only one I can trust, the only one who has not failed me. You are not weak, like your brother. You have not disappointed me. You have not shown me dishonor. You have accomplished every task I have set before you.” He paused then, as he stood over her. “Your uncle is a traitor, and your brother is a failure. Bring them to me.” 

Azula from before, the one who had heard this speech and thrilled to be given something so important, to be set apart from the misdoings of her disgraced brother and uncle, had assured her father that she would not fail as she had departed with the royal retinue that very day. It had been her pleasure to do it, too, even though that pleasure had long disappeared. 

This Azula rose to her feet, and she passed through the flames guarding her father’s throne so that she stood before him. 

“What are you doing?” he asked of her. 

“Doing something that I should have done a long time ago,” Azula said. “I’m not your weapon, I am not your prodigy, and I am certainly not your messenger. I’m your daughter, and I’m Ursa’s daughter, and I’m Zuko’s sister. And once, a long time ago, I may have even been Mai and Ty Lee’s friend before I ruined whatever flimsy thing we had between us.” She pointed her finger at him. “You can’t do this to me anymore!”  

Her father reached up to her, gripping her hand so that he would have interrupted her chi if she had actually been trying to firebend. He stood to his feet, he towered over her. “You dare defy me, Azula?” And then he threw his head back, laughing at her. “How are you going to do that without your bending? You useless thing!” 

Orange flames erupted from his fist as he released her.  

Azula rubbed the hurt in her wrist as she glared at him. "You're right. I am useless to you. Never again are you going to use me for your own ambitions." 

The room began to fill with a bright light that made Ozai’s flames dim in comparison. Ozai flung his arms to shield his eyes from it. “What is that on your forehead!” he said. “It’s blinding me—Azula, stop this at once, I command you.” 

Azula turned away from her father, and put her hand to the spot her mother had once kissed.  

The throne room was engulfed in darkness. 

Someone lit a lamp, and Azula found herself seated on the floor at her mother’s feet. Ursa combed Azula’s hair with a gold comb, inlaid with jade.  

“What beautiful hair you have,” Ursa murmured as she gathered it into her fist and let it flow through her fingers like water. Then she dragged the comb from the crown of Azula’s head, following the curve of her skull, and down the shallow channel of her spine, so long her hair had become. 

Azula rolled her eyes. “I know that my hair is beautiful. I don’t want to talk about that.” She stopped, suddenly embarrassed, suddenly unsure. “I want to talk about what we were talking about earlier, on the grass. The—thing you said about me not being a monster.” 

Ursa shook her head and kept combing. “I don’t remember that, Azula. Are you sure? That doesn’t sound like something I would say at all.” 

“Of course I’m sure!” Azula said. “I mean, I know it didn’t happen, not really. I know that I’m dreaming, I know that you’re not really here, but you’re the same dream version of you that has been with me for all this time. We can still talk about this.” 

Ursa guided Azula to the mirror, and framed her face with her palms. “Look at you, Azula. Look at your beautiful hair, your beautiful face. Why do you trouble yourself with these imaginations?” 

Azula swore as she turned and ripped the comb from her mother’s grasp, throwing it against the mirror so that it shattered into pieces at their feet. She opened her mouth to reiterate what she had said before, but she never had a chance before she woke, gasping as water filled her mouth, as she thrashed in a cold tub of water. 

Water splashed, overflowed onto someone’s feet who also swore in surprise and shock as Azula finally found her footing and surged upwards. Her hair hung thick and wet behind her back, and her eyes flashed as she surveyed her surroundings. 

She was awake now, really awake, no longer in a shifting, fevered dream. She was still in the South Pole. She recognized the furs on the floor, and the way her breath came out in a cloud.  

The man, whose name she did not remember, had his hands up like she was some dangerous, wild thing. He was asking her if she knew who she was, if she knew where she was.  

These things were unimportant as her eyes took him in. Water Tribe, of course, though he had removed his heavy outer coat. It was draped on the pile of furs behind him.   

But he wasn’t just a healer—he was a warrior too because belted to his waist was a knife. She moved towards him, fast and quick, and he wasn’t prepared for her to reach for the weapon. She spoke to him as she did so. “I need to borrow this for just a moment." It was in her hand even as he was bending water from the tub to stop her.  

She dropped quickly to her knees, and the wave washed over her head. She gathered her wet hair into her fist and slashed it with the knife. It fell in damp clumps against her shoulders and down her back. The crooked fringe of it tickled the back of her neck as her skin chilled with goosebumps from the cold air. “Now you’ll have to find something else to say, Mother,” she snarled, forgetting that she was not alone.  

There was a long pause as she waited to see if she would see her mother. Water seeped around her knees, and out of the corner of her eye she saw that the waterbender had lowered his arms and was watching her. 

“Are you feeling alright?” he said. 

Azula swallowed around the lump in her throat and the shame in her stomach as she rose to her feet. She held the knife out towards him. It lay flat in the palm of her hand. "I've never been better," she said as he took it from her. "Where are my friends?" 

He ignored the question as he offered her his thick coat. She took it, and quickly put it on her. It was too big for her, falling in folds to her feet, but it was warm. 

"I imagine you feel even better with that." He started laughing, but in a kind way. “You might regret your haircut. It gets cold down here. Everything helps.” He ran his own hand through his hair, which was tied back with a strip of leather. 

“I’m sure I’ll live,” Azula said. “Where are the others? I wish to speak with them.”  

“I think you should walk with me. I will bring you to Chief Hakoda, who will explain everything.” 

Something soured in Azula’s stomach, but she agreed. As they made their way there, he asked if she remembered his name, and when she didn’t, he explained that he was Master Pakku.  

“From the Northern Water Tribe,” Azula supplied, remembering a little.  

“Yes,” he said. “It was very foolish of you to act like you were not injured. That is how people die, you know.” 

 Azula shrugged. “It didn’t feel right to ask for help.” 

“It is always okay to ask for help when you need it. I trust you won’t do something so foolish again. We almost lost you.”  

“I always make it,” Azula said. Then she frowned. “How long have I been—unwell?” 

“For nearly six weeks,” Master Pakku said gravely.  

Azula stopped, shaking her head. It didn't feel real. “It didn’t feel like six weeks."  

“No I don’t suppose it would,” Master Pakku said as he gently guided her to keep walking. “But much has happened, and Chief Hakoda said that if you were to wake, you should be brought to him immediately.” 

That meant bad news waited for her. Bad news about Mai and Ty Lee and Suki, Azula realized, as she walked through the tribe and saw no sign of them. They were gone.  

They had left her. 

She bowed her head as the realization struck. It hurt. Of course it hurt that she had been left behind again. 

They arrived in short order to Chief Hakoda's dwelling. There was a fire, and he sat beside it, working a bit of leather with delicate tools. When he saw them, he gestured for Master Pakku to leave. Then, when they were alone, he looked at Azula. “How are you feeling?” he asked her kindly as his eyes lingered over her cut hair.  

She folded her arms in front of her chest. “I’m fine. But I gather that the others who came with me are no longer here, which I assume you’re working up to telling me about, eventually. If you’re worried how I’ll react to such news—don’t worry, I’ll take it calmly.”  

“You are correct.” He walked to a small table and pulled a scroll from the many parchments that littered its surface. “We received this letter from Zuko’s ministers. It appears that there is trouble at home, and the others went to address the situation.”  

Azula frowned as she read the letter. Someone had attempted to assassinate Zuko? People had formed something called the New Ozai Society—like they actually would rather have Ozai back on the throne instead of Zuko? Those fools, those idiots, those traitors.   

“I must leave immediately,” Azula said. “A member of the royal family supporting Zuko would be invaluable.” 

At least Chief Hakoda had the decency to look ashamed of himself as he said, “I don’t believe that would be wise. Your friends agreed. They thought it best if you stay here until the situation is neutralized.” 

Azula pursed her lips. “Oh, I think I see how it is.” They didn’t trust her—after all this time, they were still afraid she would side with the New Ozai Society. It burned that after everything she had done, it was still not enough. She could have left them behind at any time, but she hadn't! Then she remembered the red dragon. It didn’t matter what they thought, it only mattered what she did. “It is very kind of them to be so concerned for my health, but quite unnecessary as I am finally well, and I wish to do my part in keeping the throne safe from these—“ she couldn’t say the word she was thinking in polite company. 

“I understand,” Chief Hakoda said, “but unfortunately, I must again say that they wished you to stay here.” 

Azula smiled at him, quite pleasantly. “Did my brother order that I be kept here? Am I a prisoner of the Water Tribe?” 

“No. You are our guest.” Chief Hakoda looked amused, and Azula realized that he knew what she was going to say, and she also knew that he would not stop her. But still, they had their parts to play.  

“And I thank you for your hospitality, but I really must be going now. My brother needs me.” Even if she didn’t have her firebending, Zuko didn’t think like these people would think. He needed her because she would always be one step ahead. “If it would help ease your conscious, let me send a letter by hawk to my brother, detailing the route I intend to take. If he decides to come after me with the Avatar and that flying bison, all the better for me. I’m tired of walking everywhere.” 

Chief Hakoda nodded. “I will not keep you here against your wishes. That would sit unpleasantly with me. Very well, write your letter, and I will make sure that preparations are made for your departure.”  

“Thank you, Chief Hakoda,” Azula said as she bowed. 

She took the paper he offered her, and thought about what to say. The truth would be best, obviously, but she felt there should be something more.  

Finally, she shook her head, and began to write. She decided to keep it simple, only telling him that she was on her way and detailing the route she would be taking. She wanted to ask about Mai and Ty Lee and Suki, but refrained. They would talk later—if they wanted to speak to her.  

She rolled the parchment and put it in the tub strapped to the hawk’s back. “Fly swift and sure,” she told it.  

“He will be fine, you know,” Chief Hakoda said. “I can think of no one more resilient than your brother."  

Azula did not take her eyes from the sky as she watched the hawk grow smaller and smaller. “Neither can I.”


	13. Azula Alone

For the first time since she could remember, Azula was alone. The craft that Chief Hakoda had procured for her was for a single sailor. She had looked at it, one eyebrow raised, and asked him, “Exactly how do you expect me to survive in that thing?”  

“You don’t have to go if you don’t want,” Chief Hakoda had replied, grinning. 

She knew this trick of course. Pretend to give in but do not give sufficient resources for someone to accomplish whatever it was they wanted to do. She had done it plenty of times to Mai and Ty Lee and even Zuko.  

But Chief Hakoda showed her how to sail it, and, the very next day, with her head wrapped in a scarf to protect it from the cold, she was off. It would have been easier and quicker if she were a waterbender, but she wasn’t. In fact, she wasn’t a bender at all.  

The days were long, and she was afraid she would run out of water so she drank and ate sparingly. The previous trips where she had been up in the rigging, tending the sails, reading the stars in the sky, and earning her sea legs had prepared her well for the journey, but she found herself exhausted and hungry and thirsty.  

Though it was not befitting a princess to exert so much physical exertion or manual labor, Azula welcomed the distraction because it meant she did not think of her mother, or of Zuko, or of the New Ozai Society. She only thought of survival, and how the salt stung her torn nails when the rope had been ripped from her hand by a particularly vicious head wind.  

Per Chief Hakoda's suggestion, she did not cut straight across the ocean toward the Fire Nation territories. There won't be enough food, he had warned. And if something happens to the boat, there will be no one to help. She had snarled in frustration, but she knew he was right, even though she hated it. She could not afford to become lost at sea, and so she followed the coastline of the Earth Kingdom in her little boat. It's the route Aang and the others had taken, Chief Hakoda had also told her, like that would somehow make her feel better about the longer journey. 

It was the route she told Zuko she had taken in her letter to him, and that was part of the reason why she did not choose to risk the faster journey by cutting across the open seas.  

But she did miss the others, and despite herself, she would shield her eyes from the glaring sun and scan the clouds for a flying bison, sometimes catching her breath when she saw something that could be Appa, and sighing when it turned out to be just some cloud.  

She reasoned with herself: of course they would not come for her because they had not received her letter yet, of course they would not come for her because it was just too dangerous, because the heart of the palace was squirming with assassins, various kinds of poisons, and all manner of unpleasant things.  

Besides, she had only just set sail. She hadn't even passed the Airbender Temple yet. It was unreasonable for her to look for them so soon—and yet, she did.  

But she just wanted to go home. That wasn’t too terrible, to want that. She had been gone for such a long time, nearly a year by her calculations.  

She took great care to avoid Kyoshi Island, even though it made sense to go there. After all, Ty Lee was probably there, and something pulled at her as the island became more than just a shadow on the horizon. Her hand stilled on the tiller, her fingers lax around the wood. The sail flapped at her indecision. She could go and meet with Ty Lee, assuming she was still there. Assuming she hadn't already left with the rest of the Kyoshi Warriors.  

The wood jarred in her hand, until she finally shook herself. Azula did not have time. She had to return to the Fire Nation soon, and quickly. And besides, there was the sea serpent. For her part, Azula had had quite enough of nearly drowning. She headed northward, and soon, the coast of the Earth Kingdom came in sight. 

All she had to do was follow it, until she came to the river that poured into the ocean. She would not be able to see Crescent Island from the coast, but once she saw that river, she knew she would need to head west, and follow the stepping stones of islands until she came to the harbor, and then that would lead her to the heart of the Nation, the palace. 

Her heart swelled, and she rubbed her wrist against her eyes. 

She would be home. 

Barely resting, she sailed hard until she ran out of food and water, and she had to make port at a small harbor. She tied a strip of cloth over her forehead, hiding the eye she had received in the spirit world. She didn’t know if people here knew what kind of benders utilized the eye, but she also did not want to have people asking her about it either.   

The sun and salt had already faded the cloth of her clothes and they were barely recognizable as Water Tribe. It was just like when she had first left the Palace—she could have been anybody or nobody.  

It was even funnier, she thought, because with her hair cut as short as Zuko’s, her appearance had become even more ambiguous.   

In the distance, she could see what appeared to be a large swamp stretching eastward. The foilage was a dense green, and a wind blew the smell of wet mud and rotting vegetation her way. Putting her hand over her nose, she approached the only merchant she could see. The wood he used to display his fare was warped from the water, bleached from the sun. A striped, faded canopy propped up with sticks that weren't buried deep enough in the sand shaded his face. A brisk wind would bring the whole thing down. “I don’t have any money,” she said. “Do you have work in exchange for food and water?” She gestured toward the haphazard canopy that was already beginning to tremble. "Perhaps you would like me to secure your covering so it won't be blown away by a half-hearted breeze." 

The man looked up at her from under his conical hat. His skin was peeling from being in the sun too long. The fish he sold looked small and unappetizing. He coughed thick water from his lungs. This man was old, Azula realized, older than she had initially thought. “Don't need fixing," he declared. "Besides, there’s not enough work for one person, why would I need help?” 

She wanted to say it was because he was old. She wanted to say that it was very obvious his booth needed every kind of fixing. But she said none of those things. “Very well. I do apologize for taking up your time. I'm sure that I'll be able to find another merchant, by and by, who is in need of my services.” She had only taken a few steps when the old man called her back.  

He pointed to her little skiff tied neatly to the dilapidated harbor. “That your boat?” 

Azula’s eyes narrowed. “It is.” 

“Lost my boat some time back,” the old man said. “There was a storm, a nasty one, but you brave those things if you have a family to feed, which I do. But I lost my boat and I was lucky enough to wash up on shore with my life. The crashed smithereens of my boat washed up with me of course, gave me some nasty splinters.”  

Azula tried to keep her focus. “That sounds very unfortunate.”  

He nodded. “But as I’m saying—you have a mighty pretty boat right there. I’ll give you all this here fish in exchange for it.”  

“Well, I don’t think that’s hardly fair,” Azula said. “My little boat is worth more than several meals that I won’t even be able to eat before it spoils.” 

“And it’s Water Tribe made too,” the man said, nodding enthusiastically. “Best made boats there ever was was made by the Water Tribe. They really know how to make something that floats. Bet if I had been in a Water Tribe boat, I wouldn't-a sunk in the storm.”  

Azula had her sincere doubts about that. You didn't fight the water. You just hoped you survived it. The man should consider himself lucky, all things consider. “So again, I ask, why would I make such an unfair trade?” 

“You’re hungry. Can see it in your eyes. Probably haven’t had a decent meal that wasn’t seal jerky for a while. And you’re desperate. I can see you looking at me, thinking, hurry up old man this young person has things to do. Well—“ and he breathed out a long huff of laughter. “We old folks are the way we are, child. We need just as much as you. I’d offer a fair price for your boat, but I’m broke as you. Just got these fishes to my name, and you got a boat to yours. So what do you say, huh?” 

Azula put her hand over her stomach which was so hungry she had stopped feeling the pain of it, though the lightheadedness remained. But she didn’t need the boat. It would make things easier, it would make things faster. But she could also learn how to fish on her own and just leave this old man behind. After all, she had felled the walls of Ba Sing Se, surely she could manage learning how to fish. 

“You’re really trying to make it as a fisherman without a fishing boat?” she asked. 

The man shrugged, raised his hands palms upward.“Sometimes a person’s luck just isn’t that good.” 

Azula knew what she wanted to do. She wanted to laugh in this man’s face and then she wanted to be on her way. She also desperately wanted something to eat. It would be easy to make the deal, it would be even easier to come back in the middle of the night and steal the boat back again. 

She could do these things. She could do anything she wanted. She was still Azula, Princess of the Fire Nation, after all. 

But she thought back to the dreams. They weren't real, even if they had felt real. It meant that whatever her mother had told her were things she had already been thinking about. 

And maybe it was time to listen to somebody that wasn’t her father. Besides, she wouldn’t look forward explaining to Zuko how she’d cheated an old man, or how she hadn’t helped an old man when she could. 

After all, she could walk just fine. It was just her bending that was gone from her.   

She rolled her eyes, already hating her decision because of how terribly inconvenient and hard it would be. “Very well. The boat for enough fishes that won’t go bad before I can eat them.” 

“Come back next month, young thing,” he told her, “and you’ll see a real fish merchant.” 

“I’m sure I will if I ever bother coming back this way again. Which believe me, I won't. I'm only here because circumstances forced me to come here,” Azula said. “So long, old man.”   

So she set out on foot, leaving the boat neatly tied by the dock. Hopefully, Chief Hakoda wouldn't be too terribly upset by her losing it, but considering she had lost it for what some would say was a good cause, she was sure he wouldn’t mind.   

If anyone would be minding, it would be her.  

Oh yes, she thought, as she sat down on a rock and pulled off her boot so she could dump out the sand and grit and pebbles, it would most definitely be her. 

At night, when she passed a grove of trees, she crafted another bow and arrow with which she used to hunt small game. Instead of her firebending, she used her spark rocks to get a fire going at night.  

She walked for days. She walked past what looked to be an Earth Kingdom fort. That she headed off into the forest to avoid, costing her even more time. Daily, she found herself looking toward the clear skies, but she still did not see Appa. 

After she found her way back to the coast, she was able to barter her way on another fishing boat. They made port on another coastal village, where someone named Haru met them. They invited her to stay the night, but she declined. She walked on her sea legs until she could walk no more, and she slept in the dark, without lighting a fire, until the sun woke her. 

She walked some more, her feet hurting despite how tough they had become. She walked until she reached the mouth of the river she should have seen from her little skiff. She wouldn't have cared it was bloating and swollen from the melting snows if she still had the boat—but now, looking down at it, hands braced her knees, she definitely did care.  

It was supposed to have been shallow enough to swim so that she could keep walking towards the trading center just a little farther north. She had heard things about the docks there, the type of crew they attracted. But she didn't care. Those kind of people would have boats, and she would be close enough to promise them a reward of the finest gold straight from the Fire Nation treasury.  

But she couldn't swim this. She would need to follow its course southward, back towards the way she had come, in order to find a point shallow enough to cross. That or just sit around waiting for a ship to come along. 

And she wasn't going to do that. She couldn't just sit and wait. 

She spent a few moments glaring at the water, willing it to become shallow, but it ignored her. It rushed on, capped in white, and tumbled into the ocean. 

Very well, Azula thought. If that was the way it was going to be—and she followed its course, going deeper into Earth Kingdom territory, away from the Fire Nation, away from home and its den of liars and thieves and traitors. 

Azula struggled against the exhaustion that hung onto her like something heavy, like Mai's brother Tom-Tom had before she warned Mai to remove that child when he had tried to cling to her legs. The threat had been left unsaid, and Mai had scooped him up in her arms. "My apologies, Princess," she had said softly.  

And Azula had scoffed. 

Azula stopped, and closed her eyes. Her arms hung loosely at her sides, her neck craned backwards as she let the sun slant across her face until her closed lids bled into colors.  

Mai had made sure that Tom-Tom was never in the same room with Azula again. Azula had not even realized how large Tom-Tom had grown until she had seen Sokka carrying him.  

And even then, she had not cared because they would not trade a king for a baby brother. It had been the right call, but maybe the wrong choice. 

Azula wondered if that was when Mai had slowly begun to drift from her, to choose Zuko over her. 

Maybe she knew that Zuko would have made the trade if he had been there instead of her. 

He knew what it was like, after all. He had traded his king, his father for a vision that only he and a handful of others could see. 

Azula forced herself to keep walking. Once, as she glanced towards her right, she saw her mother walking beside her in her long royal gowns, hands tucked neatly in her sleeves. 

“Did you know, Azula, that this was the path I took when I heard that Zuko had been banished?" She smiled at Azula. "Except, I was on the other side." She pointed with her long arm and a slim finger across the river. "I did not know where he would go, but I knew that he had a ship, and so my goal was to go immediately to the river. I thought, if only I could meet him there, he would see me and he would stop. And I would see my son again.” She laughed gently to herself. "A foolish hope, I suppose. He wasn't like you. He wasn't forced to keep to the coast." 

“You could have just sent him a messenger hawk,” Azula said. “He probably would have been able to find someone to fetch you from the Earth Kingdom.”   

Ursa laughed. “I did send a hawk. I’m sure you know that communications are very closely monitored—they are even now.” Ursa spared a very knowing glance towards Azula. “My message was discovered and then, eventually, so was I. Don’t you think it’s funny that I would be alive if I hadn’t tried to send a hawk to Zuko?”  

“No,” Azula said sourly, “I don’t think it’s funny at all. Who was it that father sent after you?” 

“A combustion bender,” Ursa said. "He had an eye, not quite like yours." Ursa reached for Azula forehead, for the band of cloth she still wore. She slipped it upwards, over the dome of her skull, so that the eye Azula had gained in the spirit world was clearly visible. She pressed her two fingers against it.  

Azula flinched her eyes closed as she guessed which bender her father had sent after her mother. He was known for being discrete. He was known for not hesitating to kill someone like her mother that other people would find distasteful. “I heard he died if that makes you feel better. Apparently got blown up by his own bending.” Azula laughed not with joy but with something else. “They can’t control their power. They're weak.” Which was another reason why the eye on her forehead was an insult. She couldn’t bend but she’d have the eye of the combustion bender. Thanks spirit world. Thanks a lot for absolutely nothing. 

“Watch where you’re stepping,” Ursa said softly. “The dirt is treacherous from the rising and the lowering of the water as the snows melt from the mountain ranges.” 

“How do you know?” Azula asked. 

“Because it’s where I fell when I was running from my assassin,” Ursa said.  

It was at that moment that Azula’s foot twisted under her as the dirt gave way and she tumbled into the rushing river with a splash. The current tugged her down the path she had already come, and Azula struggled to catch herself, to stop falling before she was sent back to the ocean where she would be crushed by the combined weight of the waters. 

Her flailing hands gripped on the rushes that grew on the opposite bank, and she held to it fast even though the stems splintered, biting into her palms. But it gave her the few minutes she needed for her scrabbling feet to find purchase on the bottom, for her to push her way through to the other side, to lie panting on the rocky bank, stones still warm from the sun. 

Water pooled from her mouth and ran from her nose as she struggled to catch her breath. Above her, clouds scudded in front of the sun and there was a distant boom of thunder. “This cannot actually be happening,” Azula said, as she hauled herself to her knees, dripping.   

“There is a cave,” Ursa said, appearing beside her. Her clothes and hair were dry, and she gazed down at Azula with a smile. “Look.” And she pointed again towards a mountain jagged with crags and crumbling with rocks.   

“Oh, there’s a cave,” Azula repeated mockingly, as she scrambled the rest of the way to her feet. She could not put weight on her right foot because of how it had twisted, and so she hobbled forward. If she had had her bow, she would have used it as a makeshift crutch, but the river had washed it from her.  

She did not feel safe walking under the mountain's shadow, and she shivered as the storm began to roll in from the east. Azula almost missed the entrance to the cave, considering that it was completely blocked by rubble, and how her eyes were still streaming from her fall in the river. She only realized because Ursa had laughed at her. She looked again, and this time saw a little creature slip its way through the rocks, scampering off into the forest to look for something to eat. 

“What happened to the entrance?” Azula said. “You can’t expect me to dig for shelter.” 

Ursa gazed upwards at the sky. “You will need to work fast if you want to beat the storm, Azula.” 

Azula grumbled as she limped towards the rock. Scorch marks burned the surface, as if it had been blasted by a combustion bender who didn't know how to control the fire. It didn’t make her want to dig any faster, but Azula had no choice—not really. She looked back over her shoulder at her mother, who only smiled encouragingly at her.  

She dug for what felt like hours and, by the time she had made a hole big enough for her to crawl through, she was exhausted. The rock scraped her palms and her knees until she was able to collapse on to the cave floor, breathing heaving gasps of air as she waited for her hands to stop hurting, for her feet to stop hurting. They didn't, and Azula wondered when it would—if the pain would ever stop. 

The rain pattered heavily against the mountain, and Azula dragged herself further inwards, away from the chill and the spray of water that managed to find its way through the hole she had made. She cupped her hands in front of her mouth to pant hot breath into her palms to warm her up. If she had her firebending, she could have made a lovely fire instead of huddling and shivering in the cold like some pathetic child. 

As it was, her spark rocks were wet, and besides, she had no kindling to build a fire. 

She turned around on her side and nearly fell backwards when she saw that she was not alone. 

Another thing was in the cave with her, but it wasn’t moving. It was just—still. It was just there, as if it had been waiting to be found.  

Azula stared at it for a long time, waiting for her eyes to adjust. If she had her firebending—she shook the thought from her again. She didn't, and she never would again no matter what the appearance of the eye on her forehead meant. 

As the shadows dimmed into something not quite so dark, a profile emerged. Hollowed eyes, a mouth jutted open as if it hoped to speak. Brittle hair clinging to bone fingers, leaving bare patches along the curved skull. The tatters of a Fire Nation robe. 

Azula could not breathe as her hands shook. She looked back over her shoulder for her mother, but she was gone. 

She forced herself to look at it again. She forced herself to crawl forward, to touch the red cloth so that it turned to dust against her fingertips.  

In the skeleton's lap was a single, slender hairpiece bearing the Fire Nation flame. The ornament of the Fire Lady. Her mother had worn it almost always. She had worn it when she had served tea to Grandfather Azulon. Azula would recognize it anywhere. 

Azula leaned back on her haunches and stared at it. Her eyes stung. Her mouth swelled. "Why did you bring me here?" Her voice echoed softly between the arching rock walls, and she listened closely for Ursa to answer, but she did not.  

Azula's eyes fell again on the corpse. There was a little, moldering satchel tied at her waist, and Azula reached over to untie it from her.  

It held a pack of letters. The paper was thin, delicate, and she touched them lightly as she could. They were held together with a thin line of twine. She undid that too. The first was addressed to Zuko, just like the second was, and the third, and the fourth. 

She stopped looking after that. She tied up the twine, she put the packet back in the satchel, she slipped the satchel onto her own belt. 

Zuko would want to read them.  

Azula looked at her mother again. She and Zuko had known she was probably dead. It was the only explanation. 

And yet-- 

She had imagined meeting her mother again until she had grown up and learned better. The fantasies came back now. Her mother returning home. Her mother embracing her like she embraced Zuko. Her mother wiping away the hurt she had left as she told her that she liked her just as much as she liked Zuko. 

The corpse stared back at her. 

The satchel of letters was heavy against her hip.  

How many times would Azula have to be somebody's messenger? She dashed to her feet, paced the floor furtively as thunder banged against the rock. Her ankle pained her, but she didn't care. 

Her mother had left nothing for her. There was always nothing for her.  

Why did she care? She had known this since she was small. 

She paused as she heard her mother's voice. Sometimes, mothers lied.  

But that was just a dream. That didn't mean anything at all. 

Everything that had taken part between them these past months wasn’t real. Her mother wasn’t a ghost and she was just a girl who saw things that weren’t there sometimes, and it was easy to believe that maybe her mother could have said those things to her someday—if she were only alive, which she wasn’t. 

Her foot panged her, and she sat back down on the floor, back turned toward the thing that had once been her mother, and rocked back and forth with her knees drawn close to her chest, her arms wrapped around her shins. 

“You’re angry at me,” Ursa said. 

Azula sighed and closed her eyes. “Why do you care if I'm angry at your or not? It was always too late for us.” She waited for her mother to deny it, but she was gone. Again. She was always leaving, just like Zuko, just like Ozai. 

She heard herself on the beach, asking Zuko whom he was angry with. Was it her? Her father? Zuko's stuttered and murmured no's as he realized he was angry at himself. It had disappointed her at the time. What was the use of being angry at yourself when you were the one who made the hard choice? No one had forced Zuko to do anything, so why was he mad at himself?   

She fell back against hard rock floor, her hands pillowing her head. She knew who she was angry at. She was angry at her mother for not even writing her a single letter. She was angry at Ozai for realizing that Ursa would try to reunite with Zuko when he was banished too. It would have been too dangerous to have two banished royals unite against him. They would have to be permanently separated. So why not kill Ursa when there was still a chance that Zuko could be the heir he always wanted? 

How could he let her live? How could her mother not have realized how stupid she was being for trying to meet with Zuko? Hadn't she already lost enough? Was the risk of seeing him again worth her life?  

She wondered if her father was ashamed. If he hated himself, if he hated the choices he had made. If he was angry at himself, like Zuko had been. 

Azula looked back at the corpse. She should bring it with her, but she couldn’t. Not by herself. She would need to return and let Zuko know where to find it. She would need to block the entrance, again, so that nothing could disturb the corpse. 

Exhaustion hung heavily to her but she could not sleep. The rock was too hard, the rain too loud, her mother too present. Soft hands cradled her aching head in her soft lap. Hands moved through her hair. Azula opened her eyes to see her mother's face gazing down at her. 

"You cut your hair," Ursa said. She seemed sad. "You always had such lovely hair." 

Even cutting it all off wouldn't stop her from saying it. Azula nodded anyway. What was the use of fighting for more from a dead mother? 

"Why?" 

"It seemed like the thing to do," Azula said. "I wanted you to say things that you never had before." She closed her eyes against the memory of seeing her mother for the first time long after she was gone. The day that should have been her coronation. _I love you, I do_.  

"I've told you that before," Ursa said. "I've always told you that I loved you. You just don't remember." 

"That's not true." Azula shook her head.  

"It could be," Ursa said. "You only need to think of me and say, she loved me, and it will be true. There will be no one to say that you're wrong. Every mother loves her child." 

Azula said nothing. The tears were coming, and if she spoke, her voice would break. 

"It's alright to cry," Ursa said. "I wept when I left." 

"Because you would never see Zuko again." 

"Because of the things I had done, and the consequences that must be paid." Ursa's hands stilled in what remained of Azula's hair. "It wasn't easy, doing what I did." 

"I know," Azula said. "I was there." 

Ursa hushed her softly. "You must sleep. You still have much to do." 

Azula slept, and did not wake until the rain had stopped and a weak sun filtered through the cracks in the rock. She woke staring at the skeleton. She woke with the bag digging into her hip.  

She did not get up. Thirst carved a hollow channel through her throat, and she did not get up. The sun moved beyond the mountains and shadow filled the cave. 

She did not get up. 

"Are you ill?" Ursa asked. 

Azula thought of her time in the spirit world, of her time unconscious and comatose in the South Pole. How there was always something wrong with her. "You know that I am," she said.  

Ursa put her knuckles gently against Azula's forehead. "Rest then. But tomorrow you must leave. You must return to Zuko. He needs you now, more than ever." 

"Must I?" Azula said.  

"You must." 

"Why?" 

"Because he is your brother, and he is in trouble, and you must help him. Don't you want to help your brother? You've done it many times before." 

Azula did not know if she wanted to help him or not. She only knew that she did not want to get up, and that her ankle pained her, and that no one had come for her. She bit her lip. 

Morning came. Her mother leaned over her, the shadow rooted in the skeletal feet. "Get up, my love. There is so much to do. There are traitors to punish. There are assassinations to stop. Or do you wish your brother to share the same fate as me?"  

Azula thought about that. She thought about how she had stood on one of those flying ships and laughed as she declared she would be the only child.  

Azula forced herself into a sitting position. Grit clung to her cheek, and she brushed it away with the palm of her hand. "Why do you only care about him?" She glared at the corpse. "Why don't you care about me at all?" 

There was no answer. She looked away from the husk that had once been her mother. Now there never would be an answer. 

She remembered the dream with the dragons. The blue dragon that had been her, that had been so cruel, as Azula had always been. The red dragon that had spoken like her brother. 

How he had wept. How gently he had spoken to her. 

He would always be his mother's favorite, especially now that they knew Ursa was dead. There was nothing Azula could do to change that. It would always be too late.  

But she could do at least one thing.  

Azula climbed slowly to her feet, testing her weight on her injured ankle. It only ached a little. 

She bent down and plucked the hairpiece from her mother's lap. It was tarnished, crusted with dirt. She put it in her pack anyway. 

She stood in the center of the cave, and her heart cracked. The tears came, and she cried. She cried as she crawled through the rubble, blinded in the sunlight. She cried when her hands kept dropping the chunks of stone as she sealed the cave so that nothing could disturb her mother's body, and she cried from exhaustion and hunger and grief when night fell again and she was still fashioning her mother's tomb. 

She slept. When the sun woke her, she crawled to the river. She stuck her head into its rushing depths. It was cold, and it woke her completely. Her face dripped as she stood to her feet, the satchel secured at her waist, and she resumed her journey, alone.  

She no longer looked to the sky for that flying bison. She would have to do this by herself, as she did everything else. 

It was unfair to think this way, she thought, but it was so easy because Mai and Ty Lee and Suki had come as babysitters, not people who actually wanted to help her. 

She had been alone her whole life. Once, she would have thought that was a sign of strength, but now she knew her solitude was just something that made her sad and scared. 

Like she had been in the throne room. Her clammy skin had been cast in blue flame. She had sent everyone away, convinced they would try to kill her, or they would betray her like Mai and Ty Lee, or that they would just leave her anyway. 

She didn't want to feel like that again. She had lost so much because of that emptiness burned inside of her, always lit in blue, like it was her heart. 

She wondered what would have happened if she had acted differently when her father had left her behind, if she had taken the time to make real friendships, if she had known that fear hadn’t been the only way. Of course, she had thought that love and kindness were foolish things because of what she had seen of her mother and of Zuko, but she had been a child then and had understood as a child.  

She knew better now.  

She could only hope it was not too late—and if it was for Mai and Ty Lee, they were not the only people in the world. Perhaps she could make new friends even though she didn't know how. She had never learned.  

But she missed them. She missed Mai's shiny black hair and Ty Lee’s long braid. She missed Mai’s sighs and Ty Lee’s merry laugh. She missed the way Ty Lee’s eyes had been kind, sometimes, when she was not being as cunning as Azula.   

She missed the way Ty Lee had stood beside her, even after everything she had done. How she had believed in her as much as Zuko had. How she had held her hand. 

She missed her. 

The journey was long. Her clothes grew looser around her, and she had to belt her sash more tightly. 

She spent her nights and early mornings cleaning and polishing her mother’s hair piece. It was so tarnished and dirty that she did not believe it would ever look as it once had. Her bitter work split her nails, made her arm ache, twisted knots into her shoulder.  

Sometimes she thought she saw her mother, but it was always just the light of the moon. Had she left her mother behind in the tomb in more ways than one? The thought made everything hurt more. She wished her brother were here. He should have been the one to find their mother. Surely, Ursa's thoughts were of him when she died. It would have only been right, it would have only been fair if it had been Zuko who found her.  

When her thoughts tended in that direction, Azula put the hairpiece away and thought about what she would do when she arrived at the palace. She would first have a luxurious bath and a royal hair combing—at which time she remembered her hair was still mostly gone, but that didn’t matter. She could still have one, if she wanted one. 

Then, after that, she would change into clothes that were hers, that fit, that were actually soft against her skin because they were made that way, not because they had been worn that way, made smooth by too much travel.  

At night, when she couldn't sleep, she spent the hours holding Zuko's letters, tempted to read them, to pretend they had been addressed to her. But something always held her back, and then something snapped in the nearby forest, and her head jerked up. She stowed the letters inside the satchel, and stood to her full height. 

Belatedly, she realized she had no weapon to defend herself. She had no bending. But she could still fight. 

Her hands clenched into fists. If they wanted her, they could come and get it. If they wanted her mother's hairpiece, the only item of value left to her, they could try, and they would fail. 

The fire flickered at her feet, smoking because she had not made it as well as she could have. Her mouth only parted slightly in surprise when she recognized Mai's father stepping into the light. 

“We’ve been waiting for you, Princess Azula. We were hoping to meet you on the water,” Ukano said. He bowed, perfunctory, as he held the parchment she had sent to Zuko towards her. Azula's eyes narrowed, and she heard the whisper of her mother's voice: they monitored the communications. It was how her father had found her mother. It was how she had died.  

And now they had done the same to her. Her breath caught, and she said nothing even though Ukano gave her a chance to respond. 

“We thought you would be here sooner.” He straightened. There was a look on his face she did not like. “We have missed you—and your father.”  

"Of course you have," Azula said. "We are easily missed." 

Ukano nodded, and Azula watched him carefully. She should have expected that the New Ozai Society would seek her out, now that she was alone. But she hadn't, and she wondered why. Was her cunning leaving her just as her bending had? If so, what use would Zuko have for her? Did Mai know her father was involved? She probably suspected—Mai wasn't stupid after all. 

Ukano looked at her, as if he expected her to say more, as if he expected her not to denounce them as traitors.  

But she was their princess, and they were expecting her to act like it. 

"So you've been intercepting Zuko's communications," Azula said as she sat down beside the fire. When Ukano went to join her, she cleared her throat and he hesitated before finally standing back to her attention. "I suppose I should be thanking you for that, otherwise I would have had a time of it myself, under the watchful eye of my brother." She scowled. "I assume you're the leader of the New Ozai Society that I've heard so much about?" 

Ukano smiled. "Indeed I am. We were hoping you would be glad to see us though you are much changed. We nearly did not recognize you." 

"I am not that much changed," Azula said. She curled her lips around her teeth in the old familiar sneer. "I'm glad you found me. There is nothing I value more than loyalty to the royal family." 

As she spoke, others joined them. She recognized most but there were some she didn't. She also knew this could not be all of them—just perhaps a chosen few. They had brought small companies of men with them, and Azula knew that they had been expecting a fight.  

They didn't trust her, and that was unacceptable. 

“Are you better, Princess? Has your firebending been restored?”  

Azula pulled the cloth from her forehead so they could clearly see the eye she had received in the spirit world. “What do you think?” They stepped back, afraid, and she laughed. “Did one of you happen to bring me something good to eat? I’ve been forced to forage for my meals like some common peasant.” 

They brought her fresh fruits, meat that was scrawny and lean, and she devoured them. “Are those lychee nuts?” she asked. “They're so fine. Are they from General Chang’s orchard? You must be very good friends with him. Why, my father could never convince him to part with nuts like these unless he paid a personal visit. Until he became Firelord, that is."  

They bowed. “We brought them from General Chang as a special gift at his request. Nothing but the best for you, Princess.” 

As they ate, she considered her position. Their respect was not what it once had been. They ate easily in front of her, though they waited for her to take the first bite. She had been gone too long, and she knew they didn't want her as a person, but as a symbol to prove Zuko's illegitimacy to the throne, despite being the first born son. Her presence would legitimize their acts, and they wanted her legendary firebending to burn fear into the hearts of those who opposed them, including her brother and his friends. They must have forgotten that he had defeated her in their Agni Kai. Or maybe they remembered and they were secretly glad she could not unleash her fury upon them. They had not asked her to prove she could still firebend. Perhaps they were too scared to do so. Perhaps they didn't want to know the truth.  

She sucked the fruit from her fingers. "I heard that you bungled an assassination attempt on Zuko's life." She rose to her feet, tapping her chin. "Now how could that happen? Perhaps you're not as eager to depose him as you say." She rounded on Ukano. "My father is trusting you and your men to take back this Nation from traitors. You don't want to make a mess of things again, do you?" He blanched, and she smiled at that. "Each and every one of you will not fail us. If I sense any hesitation, if I sense any disloyalty—I will not hesitate to do what I must." She slipped comfortably into the speech. It was nearly the same one she had given to the Dai Li in Ba Sing Se. It had worked then, and it would work now. People were always the same.  

Ukano swallowed nervously. "Do you have a plan, Princess?" 

"Of course I have a plan." She snapped her fingers, and the men came closer to her. She could see their faces clearly now that they were not hiding in shadows. She never forgot a face, and she could not help but smile. They had doomed themselves seeking her out. "It is my understanding that Zuzu’s anniversary as Firelord is approaching. Everyone who’s anyone will be there. They will be pre-occupied with the festivities, with the self-satisfaction of their victory." She struck her open palm with her hand. "We make our move, then. We will hide in their company, we will strike when the sages bless Zuzu. It will be his most humiliating defeat." 

They nodded, and Ukano spoke for them. "That is a good plan, Princess. A single blast of your blue fire will show everyone that you prepare the way for your father. But we do not have long to prepare." 

"You have time enough. Forgive me, for I don't know much about planning a coup." Ukano blushed, but Azula ignored him. "Do you let convenience or circumstance rule your men, or do you do what needs to be done when it needs to be done like a real leader?" 

An uncomfortable silence fell upon them. 

"Yes, Princess," Ukano said softly. "It will be as you say." 

"You better make sure it is," Azula said, smiling sweetly. "What of my father? I assume he has been sent to Ba Sing Se for judgment?" They nodded. "I suppose you want to use the Earth Kingdom delegates that will surely be in attendance as hostages for his safe return once we've removed my brother?" They nodded again, and she sighed languidly. “I suppose you could do that. Though I believe it would be better to burn them as a lesson and a warning." She inspected her hands carelessly. There was still dirt under her nails from where she had reburied her mother. She scowled at them. “What do you think?” 

Mai’s father bowed. “I am sure that we will defer to your good judgment.” 

“Excellent." Azula stretched luxuriously as she made her way to the largest tent that had been erected by less important men while they had been talking. "We'll leave for the Fire Nation in the morning. Be careful that you speak nothing of my presence here. Let them continue thinking that I'm safely out of the way in the South Pole. It would be such a shame to ruin the surprise of my return." 

She swept passed Mai’s father, who only opened his mouth a little in protest at her usurping his tent. She smiled when she was out of sight. It felt good to be back. It felt good to be doing something she was good at.  

Plotting, scheming, lying? This was what she could do that Zuko could not. And, ultimately, it would be the only thing that would protect him from this New Ozai Society.   

She had destroyed an entire, impenetrable city by eating it away from the inside. The New Ozai Society would fall just as easily.  

As she paced the interior of the tent, she thought about sending a message to Zuko, to warn him. Or maybe she could reach out to Mai. She certainly would not stand for this from her own father, but if they were monitoring communications, the possibility that Azula would be discovered would be too great, and then she would lose her advantage. 

No, she would have to do this alone, and hope Zuko and his friends understood. She could see them misunderstanding very easily. 

After all, Azula always lied.  

She was lying to Mai’s father and the leaders of the New Ozai Society as she pretended to join them, but Zuko, Mai, Ty Lee, and even the Avatar would think she was lying if she told them she had always intended to betray Zuko’s enemies to him. 

It was a risk she could take, she decided. It was a risk she had to take.  

She remembered the bright light and the green grass, her mother shielding her eyes from the sun. What lies have you told today, she had asked. Azula paused, momentarily, and looked around the tent. 

Her mother was not haunting her today. Had not joined her since she had put the last rock back on the tombstone. 

Her hands clenched into fists. She wondered if this was how her mother had felt when she had betrayed Ozai's father for her son. That had been a lie too, and Azula had helped her tell that lie.  

Her mother would want her to do this. This was just another lie to save the same life. If her mother were alive, she would probably help Azula. She wouldn't stand in her way. She wouldn't lecture her about kindness and goodness. She would tell Azula to do whatever she could to save Zuko's life. 

Maybe she was a little like her mother after all.  

Azula took her mother's hairpiece from the satchel. It was a weight in her hand. She resumed her pacing. The New Ozai Society could not discover she had not restored her bending, a fact that still angered her exceedingly. She needed her bending now, for this moment. Hadn't she lost her bending when she betrayed her brother and the honor of the Agni Kai? Wasn't this what she needed to do to restore trust between them? Why wouldn't it come back when she needed it to succeed? 

She held her hands in front of her, glaring at them, willing them to burst into blue flame as her fingers flexed into claws around the hairpiece. 

She gasped, dropping it. If she had succeeded, the flame would have been hot enough to melt the metal, coating her hands in weeping gold, and then she wouldn't even have that one thing from her mother anymore. 

Breathing shakily, she bent down and picked it up from the lush carpet that Ukano had brought to make his night more comfortable. She put it safely back into her satchel so that she was not distracted by it, by her mother. She could not fail. Not this time. 

Azula was still awake when she heard the camp stirring. She strode from Mai’s father’s tents, clapping her hands loudly as she called for them to hurry up so they could return to the capital in the fine ships that Ukano had brought with him. She saw the way they looked at her, some with resentment, some without outright hatred. 

Dissidence in the ranks regarding their decision to include the crazy daughter of Lord Ozai would only help Zuko. So she raised her voice louder, made more threats, and in double time they were on the way, and she smiled as she shielded her eyes from the rising sun. 

She was finally going home. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Used this map as reference: [[click here](https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8351/8306408148_056c8149c4_o.jpg)]. Geography sucks.


	14. Discovered

Mai lounged in the palace against a pillar outside the throne room. She was guarding the door while Zuko discussed hideously boring matters of state with his ministers. She wished that Ty Lee were with her. She was always finding something to divert her, but she was not due to arrive until tomorrow—hopefully before Mai expired of boredom. 

Mai spun her knives. They were a new set to replace the ones she had lost, and she was still familiarizing herself with them. Her thoughts wandered towards home as she flipped her knife. Her father had (supposedly) departed to Ember Island for rest and relaxation, but Mai had a letter from her mother in her pocket that said he had not yet joined her there. Mai had not yet divulged her suspicions of her father to her mother because what was there to say, what could she do, assuming she wasn't in on it too? 

Mai sighed.  

She was going to bring Tom-Tom to the palace for good now that her father couldn't be there to stop her. She had taken to staying with Zuko in the palace instead of returning home, but her father had never let Tom-Tom come with her, even though it felt like he was always gone these days.  

Not anymore, Mai thought. She had already prepared Tom-Tom's room, and if her father didn't like it—she shrugged.  

When Zuko finally emerged from the council chamber an hour later, Mai pushed herself from the pillar. “Finally,” she whispered as she stood on tiptoes to kiss Zuko on the cheek. “I was almost starting to wish that someone would try something.” 

Zuko laughed at her. “When I’m on my deathbed from an expertly blown poison dart, you’ll regret saying that.” 

“It would never happen. They’d have to get through me first,” Mai said. 

Zuko turned suddenly serious, his eyes soft. He was about to say something mushy and embarrassing, and she looked away from him so she wouldn't feel so self conscious. “Thank you, Mai,” he said. 

“For standing around and doing nothing?”  

He kissed her cheek this time. “No, for being so invested in keeping me around.” 

“Who else is going to hate the world with me?” Mai said as she held his hand. She didn’t say that she had already lost three years with him, that she would not allow herself to lose anymore. “I’ll be back with Tom-Tom,” she said. “Don’t wait up for me.” 

“I’ll wait up,” Zuko said. “But don’t be surprised if your tea’s gone cold.” 

“You’re a firebender. You can warm it back up in no time.” Mai smiled at him and then walked swiftly down the halls. The meeting had taken longer than it should have, and she was anxious to get Tom-Tom and return to the palace.  

It did not take her long to reach her own home, but she stopped short when she saw that someone had lit the lamps in the entryway. The nurses that Father had hired to take care of Tom-Tom always forgot to light them, and it always made him irritated.  

He was home already. 

Mai reached for her knife, and softly opened the door. She listened carefully, but her father must have sent the nurses away. She crept slowly through the hallways and the empty rooms. She wondered if she were overreacting, if she was letting her suspicion rule her.  

But her father should not be home.  

She did not hear her father until she approached the cellar, where he kept his fine wines. She hung back, in the shadows, and listened. It did not seem he was alone, but she could not tell how many were with him. 

A voice she did not know accused her father of making a fine mess of things, another voice told him that he had made a sentimental decision because of Mai, and if Mai were a person inclined to laugh, she would have struggled to keep silent. As it was, she merely rolled her eyes.  

Her father told them all to be quiet, and Mai recognized the tone in the shiver that went down her spine, in the way she instinctively tried to make herself smaller as she pressed herself against the wall. She became distracted from the conversation when she heard another pair of footsteps coming from the kitchen.  

There was only one way into the cellar, and so Mai held very still, hoping that whoever it was expected the house to be empty and would not be particularly perspective to her presence. Her clothes were dark, and she hid in shadow.  

Mai turned her face away so that it was hidden by her black hair. 

Whoever it was breezed by without even a second look. 

“Are you all discussing little old me?” a new voice asked. “Hasn’t anyone told you it’s rude to discuss people behind their backs?”  

Mai put her hand to her mouth as she recognized Azula’s voice. Wasn't she supposed to be in the South Pole, recovering? The whole purpose of leaving her there was to make sure this didn’t happen. 

She pressed her head against the wall and sighed. Even though they had all decided to leave her behind, she had hoped, she had been hoping, that Azula would not want to betray Zuko.  

It had almost seemed possible that Azula could change, had changed.  

It had been stupid to hope, and Mai bit her lip as she forced herself to listen and to pay attention. Maybe she would hear something that would help Zuko—and she closed her eyes at the thought of having to tell him about this.  

Her father was trying to assuage Azula. “Forgive us, Princess. We are only unsure if your strategy of attacking during the ceremony will be feasible. Zuko may be careless with his own person, but his security is not something to take lightly. Perhaps--we should consider a more rational plan of attack." 

Azula laughed the high pitched, skin-crawling laughter that had become so familiar to Mai. 

“Do you think I'm crazy?" Azula said. "Is that why you challenge at every turn? We're doing this my way—it was Zuko who took the throne from me, and I'm the one who's going to take it back." There was an uncomfortable pause. "He'll regret what he did to me on that day." 

“No, no, Princess,” Mai’s father said, and she could easily see him groveling on his knees as he had done once Azula had waltzed into Omashu and told him what a terrible job he was doing. Mai had almost smiled. Azula had always made him feel small.   

Some things never changed.  

The same dissenter who had wondered at the wisdom of including Azula in their schemes, spoke up. “This isn't about a feud between siblings. This is about putting the rightful ruler on the throne." 

"My father made me Firelord before he departed on his conquest for the Earth Kingdom. And yet none of you are clamoring for me to rule you. What does that mean, I wonder? Perhaps you don't really respect my father or his choices at all. I'm sure he would have a lot of things to say about that. I know I certainly do." 

Mai barely breathed in the silence that followed 

“Perhaps, Princess,” her father said, “it would be best to keep Zuko alive? As leverage to force Ba Sing Se to let your father go?” 

Mai shook her head. Azula would have to get to Zuko through her—and she had already failed once. Ty Lee would be beside her—and this time, they wouldn't be sent away, out of sight of everyone. 

“I am going to tell you a story,” Azula said, sweetly. “Once, my mother, Ursa, committed an act of treachery. My poor father took mercy on her, and banished her instead of outright killing her. Then, his little spies brought word to him: Ursa was on the move. She was attempting to meet up with Zuko and Uncle Iroh. He knew what he must do, and so he sent an assassin after her, lest she form an alliance with his enemies and reveal secrets that were not hers to tell. But he didn’t finish the job—he didn’t kill Zuko for his treachery, for his shame, too, and look at what has happened. My father is a wise man, but he has made his mistakes—mistakes that I do not intend to repeat.”  

Mai shook her head. She should leave, she should warn Zuko, but she knew she had to stay in only to hear more. And to confront her father. He was another bully, just like Azula. If she had stood up to her, she could certainly stand up to him. 

“So we will attack during the celebrations, and will make sure that there is no chance that Zuzu can come back to cause us any trouble after we are done. We’ll do it in full sight of everyone. And if they struggle, they can join my brother's fate with their treachery. Don’t you agree?”  

There was a long pause. “Yes, Princess.”  

“That’s what I thought,” Azula said. “Now if you don't mind, I need to make arrangements to make sure that our plans will succeed. After all, guards aren’t going to bribe themselves. Though, if they're wise, I won't need to bribe them at all. After all, you can't place a price on loyalty.” 

Her father stopped Azula for a moment, to assure him that he and the New Ozai Society were with her, no matter what, and Mai didn't have the patience for his flattery. So she crept away and hid in the room where they received guests, and served them their fine food like the nobility they were supposed to be. Tom-Tom was sleeping nearby. A porcelain bowl, white with blue paintings on it, sat in the center of a smooth glass table. It was full of fireflakes, and Mai reached for it as she waited for the Society to leave. The spicy heat cleared her mind as she tried to decide what to do. Maybe she should have tried to see their faces. Maybe she should have stopped them, right then, but she didn't know how.  

And she did not know what to do with her father. 

The Society had sounded fractured, as if their leadership were weak, and they were only bound together by their shared loathing of Zuko.  

Her father was their leader, and maybe if he was gone, then the whole Society would collapse. They would be powerless, leaderless, and they would disperse. In which case, it would be better to corner him alone, without his friends to protect him.  

Azula might try to take his place as leader, but no one wanted her there. Even Mai had heard their resentment and their fear when they spoke of her. If she tried to become the new leader, they would have no loyalty to her. Some of them might even realize Zuko wasn't so bad, and would ask him to take care of her, once they realized how terrible she really was. 

And then Azula would be gone too, and the New Ozai Society would be finished. There would be no royal member of the family to legitimize their cause. Ozai would be too far away in the Earth Kingdom to save.  

Mai reached for where Tom-Tom had woken with a sleepy yawn, and lightly held his hand. But she would need to do this after she took Tom-Tom away. Even though he was young, maybe too young to remember, she didn't want it to happen in front of him. She didn't want her father to maybe use him as leverage against the guards she would send to arrest him. 

She straightened and went tense when she heard the New Ozai Society finally leave. They crept out swiftly, looking over their shoulders before they dispersed in the streets. 

Maybe they should have thought twice before meeting so close to the palace. Maybe it was smart, because no one had thought to look for them. They were hiding right in plain sight. Mai wondered if that had been Azula's idea too. It seemed like something she would do. It's what she had done in Ba Sing Se, after all. 

A few minutes later, her father closed the door to his home. He lit the lamp mounted on the wall and, when he turned, he saw Mai in the flickering light. He gasped. 

Mai held the bowl out to him. “Fireflakes, Dad?” 

“What are you doing here?” he asked, his voice nervous and trembling.  

He looked afraid when he saw her. Perhaps she had already risked discovery by deciding to wait until he was alone. She should have left and told the guards to round them all up. But she had not known how many there were, and if Azula had regained her bending in the meantime--she saw how her father was waiting for her to respond, and shook the self doubt away. “I came to pick up Tom-Tom. You had visitors, and you know how boring I find them so I decided to wait in the dark.” She held her hands in front of her face. “You know how the light hurts my eyes.”  

He stood at her, blinking as if he did not comprehend what she said. “You’re taking Tom-Tom?” 

“Of course I’m taking him,” Mai said. After her time with Azula, it was easy to lie. Her father and his despicable actions made it even easier. “I just wanted to bring him with me to the palace this evening. I’ll bring him back tomorrow.” 

Her father sweated, and he looked at her nervously. She wanted to leave now that she knew he was alone, but he couldn't be allowed to suspect her. She picked up Tom-Tom and then stood beside her father. “Goodbye, Dad,” she said.  

"Goodbye, Mai," he said. She thought his voice sounded strange, but she wasn’t sure. They had never been friends, they had never had a relationship, and so she did not know him. Who was she to say his voice sounded strange? 

Still, she felt his eyes on her as she went to the palace. She tried not to hurry her pace. She let Tom-Tom walk when he begged to be put down, and she held his hand, slowing down to match him. She even let him toddle off to look at a pretty butterfly. 

She wondered if the act was good enough. 

When she finally arrived at the gates of the palace, she ordered the guards to bring her father in for questioning. 

Then she brought Tom-Tom to her room. He was asleep again, and she laid him down gently in the bed she had prepared. After she made sure he did not wake, she asked Li and Lo to look after him while she discussed an urgent matter with Zuko. 

The chief guard was in attendance, and Zuko gestured for Mai to come. “Did you find him?” she asked as she approached. 

“He got away,” the guard said. 

Mai frowned. “I hadn’t realized he was so agile in his old age. He must have suspected me and left immediately.” 

The guard nodded curtly and said they would continue the search. He bowed to Zuko before hurrying off with the rest of his men. 

“What is going on, Mai?” 

She told Zuko what she had overheard, but she didn't tell him about Azula--not yet. She didn't know how. When she saw him lean back in his chair, pinching the bridge of his nose, she said, “I told you.” 

"You did," Zuko said. But there was no smile in his word, not light in his eyes. He stared at his desk, and sighed. 

He already looked defeated. Mai didn't want to tell him about Azula, but she couldn't wait. He had to know. He had to be prepared. She forced herself to take a deep breath. “Zuko,” she said.  

He raised his head. “I know that tone. That there’s more and worse.”  

“Azula was there as well.” 

Zuko’s mouth dropped open. “What?” 

“My father found her and she has joined his cause,” Mai said, struggling to keep her voice bored, like of course this would happen, and anybody who thought otherwise was a fool. “She was the one who said they should assassinate you during the celebrations. I doubt they will strike then now since they will suspect I overheard them. I've ruined everything. I’m sorry.” She folded her arms tightly across her chest. 

As she spoke, Zuko’s face morphed through every emotion that Mai could imagine feeling about receiving such news. Disappointment, first, and finally devastation as the news about Azula finally sank in. 

Azula had betrayed him. Of course she would.  

His mouth opened as his hand went over the scar Azula had left nearly a year ago. 

The nothing stretched on.  

Mai stood still, though her feet ached and she longed to sit down.  

“Thank you for telling me, Mai,” Zuko finally said, his voice cracking. “There’s no chance that you might have mistaken her? Or misunderstood her?” 

Mai forced herself to look at Zuko without flinching. “None.” She told him the story Azula had told about his mother. His face paled. His eyes watered. "I'm sorry," Mai said again.

He nodded, as if accepting this fact though she could see in his eyes that he didn’t want to. "Maybe she was lying," he said. "Azula always lies."

Mai shook her head. 

She would always be ready to move on from Azula, and he never would.  

It was one of the reasons she loved him, she realized. He had seen something in her beyond the bored, apathetic teenager, after all. Had believed in it so hard he’d help coax it out of her. Of course he would see something more in Azula too—something Mai could not see. 

She put her hand on his shoulder, let her fingers glide across the smooth silk of his back, until her hand fell into empty space as she left him behind. He needed to be alone, right now. He didn’t need to tell her because she knew him. 

Instead, she went to her own chambers, where Li and Lo were watching Tom-Tom. She thanked them and sent them on their way, and sat beside him. He was sleeping, breathing noisily from his mouth.  

She watched him. Hoped he wouldn’t wake up. 

A few hours later, she heard a soft knock. She hoped it was Zuko when she called, "Come in." 

But it was Ty Lee, her braid perfect as always, her eyes incredibly intense and earnest as always. She still smelled like sea salt, like she had barely landed and hadn’t even bothered to freshen up before finding her. Mai braced herself. “I heard what happened!" Ty Lee's voice was breathless as if she had run through every hall and corridor. 

She probably had. 

“Lots of things happen every day,” Mai said. 

“About your father! That must have been—“ Ty Lee paused, thinking for the right word. “Hard. Or maybe it was easy? I know you were never on good terms.” 

“It was easy,” Mai said. Easier than hearing Azula’s voice conspiring with her father. Her face twisted. 

Ty Lee watched her keenly. “Your face tells a different story.” She knelt beside her, putting her hands in Mai’s. “What’s wrong?” 

Mai looked at her for a long time. She would need to tell Ty Lee, but she didn’t want to. Ty Lee would be so unhappy. She would cry. She would get angry. She would insist that Mai didn’t know what she was talking about. 

But Ty Lee deserved to know that her faith in Azula had been misplaced. 

“What is it?” Ty Lee said, more insistently.  

“I overheard Azula speaking with my father. They were conspiring against Zuko.” 

Ty Lee’s mouth dropped. “What?” she said, her voice so high pitched it squeaked. “What did you say?” 

Mai repeated herself, voice level to counterbalance the way Ty Lee’s face was stretching itself into open shock and disbelief and, still lurking under the surface, anger. “I’m sorry,” Mai thought to add after a few moments of silence. 

“I don’t believe you,” Ty Lee insisted. She was on the floor, sitting on her knees, and she leaned forward, her hands gripping the lush carpets. “You’re wrong. You misunderstood. There’s something that you missed!” 

“I heard everything clearly,” Mai said, exhausted. 

Ty Lee looked around her, as if she were looking for the perfect way to explain everything that Mai had heard. “She’s only pretending. She’s doing what she did in Ba Sing Se! She’s being—“ Ty Lee snapped her fingers, looking for the word. “It starts with a d because it’s about making a dupe of the person you’re fooling!” 

“Duplicitous?” Mai asked drily.  

Ty Lee lunged forward, seizing Mai’s hands. “Yes!” 

“You’re right,” Mai said. “But it’s us she's deceiving.” 

“We weren’t even around to be deceived!” 

Mai slipped her hands away and folded her arms tight across her chest. “That’s the whole point. She pretended to change when we were there, and the minute we had to leave she’s joining the New Ozai Society the first chance she gets.” Mai turned away. “We should have known. I should have seen it coming.” But instead, she had been surprised. 

Who had miscalculated now? 

“Not the first chance,” Ty Lee said.  

Her desperation made Mai nauseous.  

“What was she doing all this time?” 

“Hard to say since I don’t know when she woke up.”  

“Exactly! She could have been doing anything. She could have been on her way to us except that the New Ozai Society found her first. She saw an opportunity to trick them and so she did!”  

Mai glared. “Don’t try to make excuses for her! I know what I heard.” 

Ty Lee stood up, towering over Mai as she planted her fists against against her hips. “You’re just looking for a reason to keep hating her!” 

Mai was tempted to climb to her feet too, but then she sighed. It wasn’t worth the effort. It wasn't worth the fight. “Ty Lee.” 

“What?” she demanded. 

“When have I ever needed an excuse to hate anyone?” Mai looked at her then, unsmiling and serious as she always was. There were days, sometimes, where it felt like she even hated someone as good and kind as Ty Lee. Why would she then need a reason to hate Azula, reformed or not? Apologetic and humbled or not? On their side or not? 

Ty Lee gaped like a fish because she knew it was true.  

Tom-Tom woke and began to cry, so Mai turned towards him, and held him in her arms, mimicking the way she had seen her mother bounce him. She hoped she would return from Ember Island soon. 

“I still don’t believe you,” Ty Lee said, her voice rapid. “I think that you’re wrong. I think you don’t know something important.”  

Mai shrugged as she sighed. “You’re more than welcome to believe that.” 

They stood in tense silence. Ty Lee angrily wiped a tear away with her wrist, as if she were embarrassed that she be caught weeping. Mai turned away so that she wouldn’t have to see. 

And then another knock came at the door, and Mai again called for them to enter, even as she wondered how many visitors she would have today, even as she realized she should have asked who it was in case it were Azula waiting to kill them all. 

But it wasn’t Azula. It was Zuko, and he looked stunned, as if he were in a daze. He sat down heavily on Mai’s bed, looking at his hands.  

Mai watched him, worried, as she exchanged a glance with Ty Lee. Had it taken him this long for the news of Azula’s betrayal to sink in? 

“What’s wrong, Zuko?” she finally asked when Zuko remained silent.  

He raised his head, his hair flopping into his eyes. He looked at her then, his eyes wide, his lips slightly parted, and she loved him, she loved him, she loved him. 

She gave Tom-Tom to Ty Lee and went to sit beside him, her hands on his shoulder.  

He looked at her, and he was almost smiling. “I just had the most interesting conversation with Azula,” he said.  

Ty Lee shrieked and Tom-Tom started to cry. “I told you, Mai, I told you!” 

But Mai was skeptical. “What excuses did she make this time?” 

And he told them exactly what she had said.


	15. Together Again

It was easy for Azula to slip into the palace unnoticed. The guards were distracted with amusing themselves chasing after Mai’s father, and with a headband tied tightly around her forehead, and what remained of her hair left hanging free, she would not look like the old Princess Azula in case Mai decided to sic the guards on her too. 

As she tumbled over the wall, twisting to hide behind the trunk of the pink-flowering mimosa trees, she closed her eyes as she listened for the pacing of the guard. When he was out of sight, Azula dashed towards the interior of the palace, hiding in the shadows. 

She had seen Mai, of course, crouching, eavesdropping. Azula should have touched her shoulder, put a hand to her mouth, and told her the truth. 

If it had been Ty Lee instead of Mai, she probably would have. But Mai wouldn’t believe her in any case. Still, she had been glad to see Mai. She would tell Zuko everything. 

Which Azula had been intending to do all along, of course, she thought as she walked down the palace halls, carrying steaming hot towels for the families who had gathered for the celebration. In her simple clothes, it would be easy to pass her off as one of the staff at first glance though if any stayed to linger, they might notice they were a little more threadbare than they should be, a little more travel stained. 

Guards were posted at the throne room and his chambers as well, so Azula was unable to sneak in through the door as she had done when they were young. 

So she offered them hot towels, which they declined, and after that, Azula slipped out to the gardens again. She made her way through them until she was directly beneath Zuko’s window. 

Night was beginning to fall as she stared up and up, before she finally shrugged her shoulders and found the shallow indentations the stones made when they had been layered one against the other.  

She climbed swiftly and silently until she clung to the sill. With a knife she had taken from Mai’s father, she undid the lock, and dropped silently to the floor, seating herself in one of the chairs as darkness filled the room. The bed was in the far distant corner, and above it hung a portrait of Mai and Zuko, all in black. The artist had captured them well, Azula thought. There was a desk beside the bed, with parchment stretched across it. A neat pile of scrolls, bearing an official seal, was also on the desk. 

She wondered if Zuko was ever free of his affairs of state. 

It was just like the last time when she had been forced to wait for him to return. But this time there were no pretty shells to occupy her fingers, and her hair was short, and so she waited as her foot jiggled up and down. 

She was already up and pacing when she heard Zuko greet his guards, and she sat back down again quickly, lounging in her seat with one leg swung over her other knee as she pretended to examine her fingernails. 

The door opened, and then shut. Zuko lit a candle with a touch of his fingers, and he stretched.  

He was tired, she could tell. His arm was injured too, as it moved more stiffly and did not raise as high as the other. She wondered if this was where the assassination attempt had landed it pathetic blow. 

He did not notice her as he sighed, bracing himself against the desk as his eyes closed. He shook his head, as if he were ashamed or angry with himself. 

Feeling suddenly embarrassed, Azula said, “Hello, brother.” 

He swung towards her voice, fire flaming from his fists, and Azula raised her own hands in something she supposed looked like surrender. “It’s only me,” she added, as if that would matter or change anything. 

“Azula!” he said, his voice tight and strained. The flame fluttered in his hands and she rolled her eyes. How could he be so emotional—if Mai had told him everything, he should be calling for the guard at the very least, sending a fireball her way at the very most. “What happened to your hair?” 

Azula rose to her feet, hands still raised. “I cut it off, obviously. But do we really want to discuss my appearance after everything that Mai has told you?” She raised her eyebrow at him, and then shook her head as she lowered her hands. “Honestly, Zuko, your priorities could use a little work.” 

His face paled, his lips tightening in anger. “Mai told me everything.” 

“Everything she heard, I’m sure,” Azula said as she turned towards the window. “I’m surprised you haven’t called for your guards. I had to climb up the wall to even get in here.” She looked at her hands, the nailbeds beginning to bruise.  

“I could still call them,” Zuko said. 

She turned to face him again. “Then why don’t you?” 

He looked at her, his eyes soft. “Because I want to believe you’re different. You saved my life once before. But you’ve also tried to kill me before, and I don’t know what to believe anymore. I don’t know what lies you’ve told, what lies you’re going to tell because you always lie.” 

Azula rolled her eyes. Sometimes, he could be so frank about his feelings. It made her uncomfortable. So instead, she chose to laugh. “Honestly, Zuko, if I had come here to kill you, I’ve done a terrible job of it.” She started to pace in a tight circle, tapping her chin. “Which means I must have some other motive to be here, don’t I? Perhaps it’s because I am actually on your side, and I can’t destroy Mai’s father and the entire New Ozai Society without you. It’s almost as if we’re back in Ba Sing Se again, except the stakes are unbelievably higher with so many lives on the line.” Her hands clenched into fists as she saw her brother looking at her like he didn’t believe her. “Well, I could destroy Mai’s father easily enough, but it wouldn’t do me a lot of good because a new leader will just take his place—maybe someone who is even effective which would be bad news for you. Mai should have understood that before she sent the guards after her father,” she added almost reproachfully. “If I had known she was going to do that then I would have said something to her.” Azula paused, smiling too widely, too stiffly. “I suppose she would say I miscalculated.” 

“You’re pretending to be on their side,” Zuko said. 

“Of course, I am.” Azula yawned languidly. “You know how I feel about traitors. Before I knew that Mai could somehow drag herself away from you my full intention was to go and tell you how to lay the perfect little trap for them and then they would be done for and we could all get on with our lives. But of course, Mai had other ideas. Honestly, sending the guards after her father instead of waiting. You’d think she hadn’t learned anything after all our time together.” 

“She thought she was doing the right thing. He was alone, vulnerable. She just hadn’t realized he would take her leaving so seriously,” Zuko said. “What’s going to happen now?” 

Azula shrugged. “How would I know? It’s not as if I’m their leader, though I’ve made considerable effort to take authority away from Mai’s father. But they don’t trust me.” She turned away, angry. She remembered when she had made her enemies trust her, like the Dai Li who were sworn to protect Ba Sing Se from the Fire Nation, from her. She had lost her touch, just like she had lost her bending. Nothing had changed—except something must have, because she was standing here in this room, trying to save her brother. 

“Why?” Zuko asked. “Isn’t that why they approached you?” 

Azula laughed. “Zuzu. Please. They approached me because they wanted to use me as their little prop to validate their position. They’re not traitors if they have the royal family on their side, especially since you’ve always been the least regarded of us all, since you were the one who betrayed us first when you left us behind joined the Avatar. Sorry if that hurts.” Her laughter died, and she frowned as she stared at the candle flame that Zuko had lit. “It doesn’t help that I haven’t been the little pyro they were hoping to unleash.” 

“What do you mean?”  

Azula's mouth twitched against her teeth as she tried to smile. “I thought it would be obvious, brother, but I haven’t restored my bending. They want cold blue fire and I haven’t given it to them. They're starting to suspect that I'm just as helpless as I was before, but I was hoping they'd all be rotting in a jail cell by the time they did.” She scowled.  

“Oh,” Zuko said.  

The way the light hit his face, it was almost as if he was disappointed or something. “As if I care, of course,” Azula said. “Who needs firebending these days? I do just fine without it, as I always do. Firebending didn’t define me, Zuko.” 

“Azula—“ 

She held out her hand. “Don’t even think about saying you’re sorry for me or anything so terribly pitiful as that because we both know that’s a lie. You’re relieved that I’m still broken. But that’s fine because we have far more important things to discuss.” 

“Azula,” Zuko said, “Mai told me something else about what you said. Something about—Mom. Did that really happen—or is it just a story you told?” 

Of course he would get around to that eventually. “Yes, it’s probably perfectly true. And I’ll even tell you where I found her after we’ve taken care of this problem. There were letters and everything.” Her mouth grew dry and she licked her lips. She had them with her, of course, but Zuko could not be distracted. Not now, not when he needed to take care of the Society. He should have done it a long time ago. 

He looked at her as if she had struck him. “You don’t even sound sad. How can you talk about her like that?” 

“It’s not as if we were particularly close. Besides we always knew she was probably dead. Now we know for sure.” How could she tell him she had seen her mother constantly, how could she tell him that she had had to bury her, again? How could she tell him any of these things? How could he know that she had cried? 

“How do you know it was our father?” Zuko said, his eyes downcast as he sat down on the bed. 

Azula made an impatient noise. “We can’t talk about this now. We need to talk about a plan to deal with these traitors before they cause real damage. They have General Chang on their side you know. He’s giving them his best lychee nuts.” 

Zuko shook his head. “I’m tired of thinking about them, and I don’t care about General Chang. I’ve been in the dark about Mom for years, and you know the answers, and you won’t tell me anything. It’s not fair, Azula!” 

“Because if I do, that’s all you’ll think about and you’ll be an easy target! You need to focus!” 

“That’s not true!” Zuko insisted. 

Azula glared at him before finally walking towards him, until she stood so close, her shadow slanted across his face, across his hands. “I don’t know for sure. If he were still around, I'm sure we could just ask him but he’s in the Earth Kingdom by now. Maybe you can ask him after all this is over. I’m sure he’ll tell you I’m right. He and I? We think the same.” She tapped her head. “When I saw how she had died, I knew.” She put her hand over her heart. “I knew, Zuko, because I saw and I realized that if I had been in his position, I would have done it too, and then I felt like an idiot for not realizing it sooner.” 

“Don’t say that,” Zuko said. 

Azula shrugged. “It’s the truth. Can we talk about something more important, now? Perhaps the fact that you're still a target for assassination and that anything could happen because everything is ruined? Especially since it’s not like I can stay here all night. It’s not as if they won’t suspect me if I’m not back soon or anything like that.” She looked over her shoulder at the open window. She felt the urgency of her position, the need to leave right now or at least as soon as possible—but she didn’t want to leave. She wanted to stay, even though speaking to Zuko was turning into an exercise of frustration. Still, she forced herself to speak. “I’ve already been gone too long. It doesn’t take this long to bribe even the most loyal guards, which is what I told him I was doing.”  

Zuko swore at her, but she didn’t let that stop her. 

“Don’t worry,” Azula said. “It’s not like I actually had money to bribe them—but he doesn’t need to know that. I’m sure he thinks we have wealth just sitting around, ripe for the taking. But when I return, I am going to push extremely hard for them to keep trying for the celebration, so you had better make sure your guards and the Kyoshi Warriors are not going to be incompetent. I know the palace best, so I will be the one making the exit and the entry plans for the Ozai Society.”  

She went to his writing desk, and dipped his brush in the ink, sketching a rough design of the palace and the surrounding grounds. He went to her, and stood close beside her as he watched her work. “I'm going to bring them in through what used to be the servant quarters. This will allow them to come here unseen." She gestured towards the inner rooms of the Palace. "The initial plan was to attack during the middle of the celebration, but I'm going to convince them to make their move before it even officially starts. That way they arrive triumphant before everyone, and I'll tell them I'll take the Firelord title until we can negotiate for my father’s release. They'll be anxious to agree—these are men who have not fought wars before, and they'll prefer to crown a true ruler right there instead of causing a panic and riot. Nobody wants to ruin a good party." She looked up at Zuko then, as if she expected him to agree with her. But that was stupid—she could see it now, how he held himself a little distantly from her, that a coldness had seeped into his gaze. She forced herself to laugh. “I have to convince them, Zuko. It’s not like any of this is going to happen, because your friends are going to prevent it. Why else do you think I’m telling you all this?” 

Zuko nodded then. “It’s a very convincing plan.” His voice was quiet, soft. "It would have worked." 

“It will work best for both of us,” Azula said. “It would be better to do away with these traitors without a lot of noise and fuss. Now, no one will need to know that anything has happened until you decide to tell them. We have control of the story if no one knows what’s happening, if it’s all happening out of sight. And we won’t have to worry about losing any of them in a mob."    

“Also, it would keep the people safer if they weren’t terrified out of their minds by an assassination attempt,” Zuko said mildly. 

Azula rolled her eyes. “That too.” She pointed to a part of the palace that was very close to them. "This hallway makes a perfect bottleneck. I'll make sure the Society is stationed here and here. It's the perfect place for a trap—for you and for us. It'll look like you're helpless, but you won't be. You'll be ready, and then there'll be no where to go but right into the Kyoshi Warriors stationed at the checkpoints. They’ll be ours!” She clenched her free hand into a fist, as she slammed it against the table. 

"I don’t see how a small team sent to assassinate me before I have a chance to properly wake up will compromise all of them,” Zuko said. “Where will the rest of their little gang be?”  

Azula turned to her map again, tapping her own empty quarters. "I'll tell the other high ranking officials to wait for me and Mai's father here. Send guards and you'll find them all. Some of these people will have small companies of men. Nothing like an army of course but enough, perhaps, to take frightened, surprised people. I'll order them to be stationed some miles from the palace so they can be sent to occupy the palace just in case something goes wrong." By the time they realized the trap was for them and not for Zuko, it would be too late.  

Zuko almost smiled. "I know the perfect spot. Just send them, and I'll make sure the rest are taken care of." 

She turned away from the writing desk and sat on Zuko's bed. “It would be easier if we could actually communicate with each other. This plan will only work if they’ll listen to me, and there's no guarantee that they will. They’re watching your hawk communications, you know. At least, I hope you know that. I sent you a letter and everything but they got to it before you did.”  

“You sent me a letter?” Zuko asked. 

“Yes, telling you that I was leaving the South Pole and that if you wanted to stop me you would need to send Aang with his flying bison so I wouldn’t have to walk the whole way back. I told you the route I was going to take, and you never came.” Her voice faltered, and she stopped suddenly as she realized she almost sounded sad. “Not that I cared, of course, especially after I found out why." 

“I’m sorry,” Zuko said. “I would have come. I know how hard it is to walk the whole way.” 

Part of that was her fault too, so she turned her eyes away, staring at the map she had made. Trying to think of every argument she could use to convince the Society to do what she wanted. She needed to leave, she needed to go, she had stayed here too long—but she only stared at the soft wavering light from the candle Zuko had lit. 

“It’s a good plan,” he said. 

She scoffed. “Well, I'm going to be in the middle of it so if you could kindly inform Mai not to stick me with one of her knives I’d be grateful.” 

Zuko’s mouth twitched as if he wanted to laugh. 

“It’s not funny, Zuzu.” 

“It is a little funny,” he said, finally giving her one of his spare grins. 

She just shook her head and stood to her feet. She couldn't delay any longer. As she went towards the window, she said, "It's going to take one other thing for this to work, Zuko. I’m going to ask you to do something you haven’t done in your whole life—which is to trust me.” 

Zuko nodded. “I've trusted you before—and I think I can trust you again.” 

Azula turned around to look at him. The light was so poor that Azula couldn’t tell if he was being serious or not. “Well, that's a relief. But I really must be going. I’m already going to have to come up with a good story as to where I’ve been for all this time. Not that I’ll have any trouble—I can be very convincing when I want to be. See you at the celebration.” 

She turned to go, but his hand caught her wrist. “Be careful, Azula. I just got you back, and I don’t want anything to happen to you.” 

She looked down at his grip. "You needn't concern yourself, Zuko. I promise you'll find out what happened to Mom. I'll even be around to tell you where to find her when this is all over, I promise. If my word means anything to you these days." 

“What are you doing?” Zuko said, still holding her hand. He sounded upset, and it made her skin go cold. “Why are you always trying to push me away?” 

“Do you really think that a year away could change anything between us? I am who I am, and I don’t know what you want me to say.” She spoke quickly, recognizing the pressure building in her throat and sinuses. If she stayed, she would tell him everything, and she could not do that. Not when it was still so fresh, so raw, when she understood so little of it herself.  

“I remember when we used to be close,” Zuko said, quietly. “I remember even though there was a time I tried to forget because it hurt so much to see what we had become.” He raised his eyes to her, his grip still loose and she wondered why she did not pull her hand away. “Why do you think I didn’t call the guards when I saw you sitting alone in the dark?” 

“Because you have a terrible sense of self preservation,” Azula said, and then she flinched when she remembered how he had rushed headlong into the lightning bolt meant for Katara, the flash of cold fire she had shot from her hands when she had cheated so shamefully. She pulled her hand from his quickly. “It’s why you need so many people to look out for you, dum-dum.” She eyed him, causally, and saw that his good eye was crying. She turned away at the sight of it. “I need to go." 

Zuko did not reply for a few moments. He wiped his eye with his wrist, and cleared his throat. “And how are you going to get down? I hardly think waltzing through the front doors of the palace will do you any favors with Mai’s father in case he’s got a spy.” 

Azula wanted to ask him why he didn’t know whether he had a spy or not but decided not to. It wouldn't matter for much longer anyway. “You don’t happen to have some rope?” she asked instead, not fancying attempting to climb down the tower in the dead of night. 

Zuko shook his head, but then he went to his bed, stripping the fine sheets. “I guess we’ll make do. Sokka probably has some, but he’s all the way on the other side of the palace. And I really don't think he'd want to let you use his rope.” 

They knotted the sheets in silence until Zuko finally asked, “Why are you wearing a headband?” 

Azula rolled her eyes and scowled. “The spirit world left its mark on me. I think the spirits were trying to be funny, but it’s really just stupid and silly." She shoved the strip of cloth over the crown of her head, and let Zuko take a look. 

“It’s just like a combustion benders eye,” he said. 

Azula settled the cloth over it and shrugged. “Except it doesn’t do anything. It would be fine if it actually did something but now it just makes me look like a freak.”  

“Maybe you just don’t know what it does, yet,” Zuko said. “Maybe you just need to give it time.”  

“I’ve given it plenty of time,” Azula said, sourly, as she tightened the last knot. Carrying the twisted sheets in her arms, she threw them out the window and watched them coil as they fell, until gravity made it hang straight from her hand. She gave the end of the rope of sheets to Zuko, who twisted it around his hand, and braced his foot against the sill. Azula climbed over the ledge, hand gripping the cloth. “Don’t drop me.” Without waiting for him to reply, she began to climb quickly down.  

There was not enough sheet to reach the ground, so she dropped the rest of the way, folding her body tightly in on itself. She stood to her feet, brushing dirt and bits of grass from her knees, and looked up towards the glowing patch of light that came from Zuko’s room. She could see the silhouette of his head as he looked down at her.  

And then she left, scampering through the gardens and over the high walls, and running through the street towards where Mai’s father would be waiting with his friends and leaders and the rest of the New Ozai Society.  

When she was a block away, she slowed to a walk so that she could catch her breath, and wouldn’t appear to be someone who had been in a rush, someone who had been nervous about being gone so long. She undid the headband around her head, ran her fingers through her hair, and then secured the cloth more securely over her eye.  

She went into the house. It was small, a property owned by one of Mai’s father’s friends. Normally it would be rented to someone but it had been empty, and it was a good place to hide since Mai had ruined using her own house as their headquarters. 

A shame, because Mai’s house was far more comfortable than this. 

The leaders of the New Ozai Society were crowded around a lamp as they spoke in hushed tones. Azula lingered just out of sight, eavesdropping. They were not happy with Mai’s father. They thought the plan was too risky and that they should wait. They thought he should have known that Mai would betray them—she was dating the Firelord they were attempting to depose after all.  

Azula rolled her eyes. They were plagued with fear. They wanted to be brave and strong, but they didn’t know how to do it. They were fractured without true purpose. They didn’t really want Ozai back, even if they thought they did. They just didn’t want Zuko on the throne. 

Which, honestly, was stupid.  

Bored of hearing more, she pushed her way through the entry and said, “Are any of us really surprised? Mai has always loved Zuko more than anything in the world. More than her fear of me, more than her respect for you.” She glared at Mai’s father. “I should have expected that you would allow her to foil our plans.” 

“We’ll make a new plan,” he said, his hands gripping the table, as if he wished he could do something mean, something violent. 

“Should we lock you up in jail while we wait for you to come up with a new plan?” Azula said sweetly. “No, I think my father has been imprisoned long enough. He will be freed sooner than that, I think!” 

“And how is that going to happen?” someone asked. 

She turned towards him, her smile wide and curving. “By going through with a version of the old plan that's not quite so grand, not quite so public. But a great victory doesn’t need to be public. They’ll either be expecting us to attack during the festivities or not at all. If we wait to think of a brand new plan, that will give them time to gather their resources to hunt us down. They won't be distracted by preparing for the celebration. So instead of attacking during it, we're going to attack before it even starts. They won't be expecting us because they think they've foiled our little scheme, and they'll be preoccupied with the preparations."  

She described the same plan she had told Zuko just a little while ago. They nodded their heads. Relief seeped into their eyes as they realized that this would be a secret covert mission. That they wouldn’t have to be involved personally, especially when she said, "I will, of course, handle Zuko. But I’ll need Mai’s father with me so that the act is seen for what it is, instead of for what it might be. It's well known that Zuko and I are enemies. We cannot let this become another incident of sibling rivalry for the throne, but rather an attempt at reinstating the rightful ruler of the Fire Nation.” 

Azula climbed onto the table so that she stared down at them. “I am Princess Azula, daughter of Ozai and Ursa, princess of the Fire Nation! I declare that my brother’s rule is at an end, and a new age will begin! The celebration of the end of the 100 Years War and Zuko’s coronation is coming. We’ll be ready! We’ll take back what was my father’s, and what should have been yours!" 

She raised her fist in the air, and they followed her, cheering.  

Only Mai’s father remained silent. Only Mai’s father looked at her as if he was beginning to see through her, and Azula willed herself to firebend, for the flare of blue fire to come from her fist.  

But there was nothing but the flickering lamplight and the treachery of the New Ozai Society surrounding her.


	16. Celebrate

It was the morning of the celebration. There was still dew on the grass and a chill in the air. Dawn was just a grey promise before it transformed into something pink and beautiful. Once it had been Azula's favorite time of the day as she waited to practice her firebending. But now it was just something that was there as they hastened to the palace, hoping that no one would notice them. They snuck into the palace without incident. Zuko had made it too easy for them to pass by unnoticed, unremarked, and Azula feared the New Ozai Society would notice, that they would wonder why, that they would suspect a trap. 

But they didn't, and she wondered if they were really that ignorant of strategy and tactics or if they had simply underestimated Zuko, had underestimated her. Or perhaps they were so dazzled by the prize they thought awaited them at the end of their mission—striding across the Firelord's dais with the taste of victory and wine in their mouths, ready to share the news of Zuko's fall as his people filled their stomachs with sweet bread he had prepared for them—that they lost sight of the present.   

Still, Zuko could have made it a little difficult for them. She ushered the high ranking officials to her room, assuring them that she would come for them soon, and they would receive their just reward. And then, with Ukano and a handful of men disguised as Zuko's guards, they stationed themselves in the hallway leading from Zuko's rooms, and waited. The plan was to attack when Zuko was nearly to the end of the hall, and the "guards" could cluster around his flank, front, and back, easily overpowering him and his company. They did not expect Zuko to have much in the way of protection, as he had never bothered with it before, and they were not too worried about the Kyoshi Warriors. Azula rolled her eyes at her brother's carelessness and at the Society's cavalier attitude. They would be in a surprise, and she hoped it would be one they wouldn't forget for a long time. 

Azula kept still in the shadows at the far end of the hall. There was only one window, and it was facing the wrong direction to catch the rising sun. Zuko, with his retinue of Kyoshi guards, would be coming soon. Ukano was with her, and he kept looking at her sideways, as if he was trying to figure something out. She did not return his glance. Let him doubt himself and her. It was already too late. He thought he could handle whatever treachery or trap she had set for him, but he couldn't because he wasn't like her, he didn't know how to play the game like she did. He probably thought that she would only steal his victory and the power he hoped to gain for himself—not that she intended to betray him to Zuko personally. Soon, it wouldn't matter. Soon, it would be over, and Ukano would have nothing left—not even his dignity and maybe not even his life. 

She wondered if Zuko had already neutralized the men she had left waiting in her room and the forces she had convinced to camp outside the city. If Zuko hadn't, it still didn't matter. Eventually the Society would fall—either now or later. 

It was hard to wait, but then there was a flickering on the wall, as if someone bore many torches to light the way. She heard the tramp of feet, the swish of robes and she knew it was the Kyoshi Warriors who came. She snapped her fingers and stiffened to attention. 

They rounded the corner. There was Zuko, in the center of it all. The flame of the Firelord glinted from his top-knot, and his regal robes fell to his feet. She hoped he could fight in it. If their plan failed he would need to—but they would not fail. Azula would not allow it. 

He was surrounded by his friends, by people who were loyal to him. Mai walked beside him, regal in her dark clothes, her eyes keenly watching for any sign of movement, for any signs of betrayal. Azula hoped that Mai would trust Zuko, and would not be over-eager with the knives. And there were the Kyoshi Warriors, Suki at their head, and Ty Lee beside her, her long hair in a braid. 

Azula smiled when she saw her. She was chattering gaily about the festival, about the red lanterns that she had helped hang, and how beautiful they would look when evening came. No one would guess that she suspected the ambush, no one would guess that she was prepared for anything. 

It was time. Azula took a deep breath, and deviated from the plan she had made for the New Ozai Society. She stepped from the shadows when Zuko had barely entered the hall, when there were too few of Ukano's men to attack the rear of his procession.   

Zuko stopped and the others stopped with him. Mai's knives flashed where she had hidden them with her long sleeves. Ty Lee smiled, her eyes were full of light despite the gloom. Azula raised her arms in greeting. "Good morning, Zuko! I hope you enjoy the gift I've brought for you," she said.  

"Traitor!" Ukano shouted. At his command, half the guards went towards Zuko, the other half towards her.  

Azula had been on the frontlines of a war before. She knew the noise, the pandemonium. She was ready for them with the small knife she had stolen and her knowledge of martial arts. 

It was a quick fight. The New Ozai Society were outnumbered, left floundering by Azula’s betrayal and how Zuko's retinue was more than ready for them. They surrendered when they saw their cause was hopeless. All except one, who pushed past Mai and fled down the hall, disappearing around a corner 

It was Ukano, and Mai stared after him, knives raised as if she meant to throw them, but she never did.   

“There's nowhere to run where I won't catch you!” Azula shouted as she tore past them, neatly dodging Mai’s grasping hand, who had apparently recovered from her moment of hesitancy and indecision. 

The old man was spry for his age, but there really was nowhere to go, and he did not know the palace like Azula did. In only a few minutes, Azula caught up with him, found him pacing in circles at a dead end. He wrung his hands. Panic sweated from him like an illness. 

He caught sight of Azula, pointing a finger at her. “You! You lied to us! You betrayed us!” 

“Like I haven't done that before!” Azula said mockingly. “What more would you expect from me? I betrayed my only friends, and I betrayed my brother, and now I’m betraying you.” She stepped towards him, and he fell to his knees before her. She leaned down and gripped him by his robes, forcing him to stand as she shoved him against the wall. “Are you ready to find out how I deal with traitors? You'll find that I'm not as forgiving as my brother.” Her hand trembled and she tightened her grip on Ukano to hide it. Suddenly, it was as if she were a child again, with Eun-jae defeated beneath her, and there was that pause, that moment where she could decide to do one thing, or she could decide another.   

“I know that you don’t have your firebending! I know that you’re crazy and forgotten, someone who once was great but who’s now just nothing. Your own brother sent you away, and your father abandoned you.” 

Azula tightened her grip until pain ached through her knuckles. “Not very smart things to say to a person who determines whether you live or die.” She looked at him again, taking him in. This was the man who had formed the New Ozai Society, the one who would bring back Ozai, the man had who caused so much pain and suffering, the man who had banished Zuko and murdered her mother and who had tried to do the same against the entire world. This man wanted to bring it all back, and Ozai could not come back—he could not. It was hard to breathe, and Azula’s heart began to thud against her chest.  

She could do what Zuko would not do—she could kill him, as he richly deserved. She could do what Zuko would want her to do, which would be not to kill him. She wondered how much of that was his friendship with the Avatar, or how much of that was Zuko. Maybe it was both.  

But she was not Zuko, and the Avatar was not her friend. She knew there were some people who would not stop. She could see it in Ukano's eyes, she could see it in the same way she had found her face in the spirit world. Even if the New Ozai Society was stopped today, even if every single leader and participant were imprisoned, Ukano would keep working to bring her father back. He would just find new ways to do it, and maybe next time he would be smarter about it, cleverer about it until it was too late.  

The knife she had stolen was steady in her hand as she raised it, just as she had once raised her hand against the Avatar. The same detachment took over. There was no connection. Her hand had been lowered, and now it wasn't. The knife had just been something she held, and now it was poised to strike.  

It was another war. There were always casualties in war.  

“Azula!” 

Both Azula and Ukano turned to see Mai standing there. She had knives in both hands, and she stood straight and tall as she stared at them.  

“Mai!” He lunged beneath Azula's hands and Azula struck him in a place that made his legs go weak. She hadn’t done it as well as Ty Lee would have, because she only had the memory of Ty Lee doing it to one of their enemies, not her training, but it was enough to make him go still again. “Don’t let her hurt me!” 

Mai approached without speaking. Her hair was a little longer, a little shinier. “What are you doing, Azula?” 

“Capturing the leader of the New Ozai Society since apparently not a single person can manage it. And I've only been here for a few days while you've all been here for weeks.” Azula said. “I’m not surprised that Zuko wouldn’t do it—it’s not in his nature. But that nobody else could—“ she shook her head. “It almost makes me wonder where their loyalties lie. I would be concerned, Mai, very concerned at the sort of company that Zuko has employed to keep him and his people safe.”  

“That’s my father,” Mai said, “yet you accuse everyone but me of treachery.”  

Azula rolled her eyes. “Because I know how much you love Zuko. Perhaps it’s blinded you. Or perhaps facing your father is just too difficult.” She smiled sweetly at Mai. “I know what that’s like—but this man isn't my father, and I know what needs to be done, and I can do it for you. Don't you want this one thing from me?” 

She turned back to him. His hands were clinging to her wrist, as she had once clung to her own father so long ago. 

“Don’t do this,” Mai said. “Let Zuko deal with him. It's his right, as Firelord.” 

Azula shook her head, squeezing her eyes shut. “You just want him to live because he’s your father! But he’s never cared about you, Mai, so why do you care so much about him? I’ll be doing you a favor. You should be thanking me.” 

Mai folded her arms against her chest, knives stowed away at least for the moment. “You’re projecting. Our fathers are the same, but I’ve moved on. Your father’s gone, so you’re looking for another one to take his place so you can say the things you never got to say or do the things you never got to do.” She shrugged. “Zuko once told me that you needed time and space to make the right choice. It’s been a long time, Azula, and you’ve been in the physical world and the spiritual world. So what are you going to do?” 

Azula struggled to breathe. She looked at Ukano, at his pathetic face as he still clung to her, unable to truly fight her even though he had tried to kill Zuko. She looked at Mai, who was so resolute and so cold. She thought of the satchel belted to her waist, and she thought of the letters her mother had written to Zuko but not to her. She heard her mother wonder what was wrong with her, and she remembered how she had once called her a monster.  

She looked over her shoulder to see if her mom was there, but she wasn't. The hurt ached and Azula squeezed her eyes shut against it. She looked at Mai, who stood as still as ever. She didn't plead. She didn't beg. She just did, just like she had done at the Boiling Rock. With sudden clarity, Azula knew that if she did this thing, no matter how much Ukano deserved it, then it would be just like it had been at the prison, and Azula would never see Mai's face again. 

With another push at Ukano, Azula let him go and turned away. “Fine. If his life means that much to you then you’re more than welcome to it.” 

Mai’s father crawled across the floor so that he was at her feet blubbering his thanks. But Mai moved away from him. “Get away from me, Dad. You just tried to kill my boyfriend.” 

Azula stood with her arms crossed over her chest. She was cold and shivering and a clammy sweat beaded across her skin. She felt stupid, and she hated not being able to figure out what she was feeling.  

She heard Zuko shouting and the pounding of people’s feet. She didn’t want to face them. She thought she was ready, but now she realized that she wasn’t. The visit to Zuko’s room felt distant and detached, like it hadn’t happened, like it had only happened because they had to plan this. But now, their planning and their scheming was over, and there would only be the gaping chasm of what had happened before between them.  

They eventually rounded the corner, and stopped when they saw Mai and Azula standing apart, Mai’s father between them. Zuko gestured and the guards came forward, taking him away, probably for a fair trial or something. 

Ty Lee broke from the Kyoshi Warriors and rushed towards Azula, flinging her arms around her shoulders as she wept. “I was so afraid, Azula! We didn't know when you were going to wake, and we had to leave! We were always going to come back for you, but then you came back to us. I'm so glad.”  

Azula stood stiffly in her embrace, only slowly putting her hands to Ty Lee’s waist, as her eyes met Zuko’s. He had gone to hold Mai’s hand. She wanted to hug Ty Lee back, but she couldn’t. Her arms wouldn't move. Everything felt like too much. There were too many people. Too many sounds. She needed to be alone. She needed the quiet.  

“What’s wrong?” Ty Lee asked, finally, as she stepped back, looking at her. Her hand reached for the ragged edge of her hair, but Azula dipped her head away as she forced herself to smile. 

“Everything's fine, Ty Lee. We’ve achieved a major victory today.” Zuko tried to catch her eye, but she turned her face away. Shame washed over her, and she didn’t understand why. She had done everything he hadn’t been able to, he was alive today because of her—so why did she still feel so empty? Why did she feel like it didn’t mean anything? 

Instead, she unbuckled the satchel that held Ursa’s letters and her gold flame, and walked towards Zuko, pressing it into his hands. “These are for you,” she said. 

He took the satchel from her, looking at it. “Thank you.” He smiled at her softly. 

She shook her head. “You should probably get back so the people can begin the festivities. They’ll all be wondering what to do without you.” 

“Won't you join us?” Zuko said, almost as if he was hoping she actually would. 

“I don’t believe I will,” Azula said. “I'm in dire need of a bath and a real bed on which to sleep. Honestly, Zuko, I don’t know how you managed it for three years.” She looked at him quickly, sneaking a glance that caught his eye. “But I’m tired and need to sleep. No disturbances.” 

And then she slipped between them, going swiftly through the hallways until she came to her old room. She hadn't gone inside when she had brought the Society to hide, so she didn't know what to expect. She put her hand over her mouth when she saw it had not been changed at all. Zuko had even replaced the mirror that she had broken. Her room was clean, as if she had never been gone. There was not even dust.  

It was as if he had made sure that it would always be ready for her, no matter when she returned.  

She ran water into the tub, water that was too hot after she had been cold for so long, and she eased herself carefully into it, not caring that it burned. 

With a sigh, she leaned her head against the tub, and finally rested. The aches of her journey seemed to drift with the water. She used the scented soaps and she no longer smelled like air and land. She scrubbed between her toes, looking at the calluses that had formed on the balls and heels of her feet.  

Then she scrubbed the dirt from under her fingernails.  

When she rose from the tub, the water was pale with soap, and she watched it circle down the drain with something that felt like satisfaction. She dressed in her silk red robes with the gold trim. It had been so long since she had worn red. It had been so long since she had worn something so soft. 

After she knotted the sash around her waist, she approached the mirror. Her hair was short and shaggy, like Zuko’s once had been, and she ran her fingers through it before tying it up in a small top-knot with a bit of ribbon.   

She looked a little more like herself when she had done that, except for the eye in the center of her forehead. She hated it, this gift from the spirit world, and so she scowled.  

Holding her breath, she looked for her mother to appear in the mirror as she once had so long ago, but there was only herself staring out from it.  

Suddenly, hard and fiercely, Azula missed her, and she turned away as she undid her hair and went to bed. But she could not keep her eyes closed for long, and she stared at the ceiling wondering if this was it, if this was all that waited for her. 

She thought it would feel differently. She thought it would feel more like home. 


	17. Tyzula

Ty Lee could hardly focus as she ran through the palace, Zuko leading the way even though she and the other Kyoshi Warriors had told him over and over that they could not protect him if he kept putting himself in danger. He never listened, of course, just like Azula never listened. 

Azula—she was back. Ty Lee could barely believe it when she had first seen her step in the hallway betraying Zuko's enemies—so different, and so changed, only recognizable by the glint in her eyes. And then she was gone, gone again like she was always gone as she had taken off running after Mai’s father.  

But they had caught up with all three of them, eventually, and Azula was just as fierce, just as dangerous, without her firebending. She had been ready to kill with her bare hands until Mai had talked her down. 

And then Azula had left—without saying anything to any of them, without even giving Ty Lee a decent hug—she had just left, again, when she had been gone for so long, when Ty Lee was still missing her so desperately. They could have been together again, but Azula had just walked away as if she didn't care about anything that had happened, about anything that could happen. 

The guards had taken Mai’s father away. Zuko stood, still and silent, staring after the hall down which his sister had disappeared. He looked like he wanted to say something, to do something, but Ty Lee didn't know what that could be. She had thought everything was alright between him and Azula, but as she saw the way his throat moved up and down, at the way he went as if to go after her before stopping himself, she suddenly wasn't sure. 

Mai looked between Ty Lee and Zuko, her eyes rolling. “You know that nothing will happen if you both just stand there. If you want to talk, then go after her. It's not as if the people can't celebrate without you.” 

“She said no disturbances,” Zuko said, after a long a pause. 

Mai huffed a sigh. “I forgot she was still the Firelord and could do whatever she wanted.” 

Zuko looked at her. “Just because I could follow her doesn’t mean I will. She needs her space.”  

Mai shrugged. Ty Lee figured that Mai would understand that best of all. Nobody needed more time or space as Mai did. 

“Your re-union wouldn't be the heartfelt thing you'd thought it be," Mai said. "I could have told you that. You can either go after her and try to make it the way you want it to be, or you can come back with me to the celebration, and she'll come to you when she's ready. It's not like she hasn't done that before."  

Zuko looked at the satchel Azula had given him. Ty Lee desperately wanted to know what was in it, but she couldn't ask something so personal. "We'll go to the celebration. If Azula wishes to join us there she is more than welcome to." 

"I'll keep an eye on Azula," Ty Lee said. "Just in case she decides she wants some company." Or in case she decided to leave without saying goodbye—again. 

Zuko nodded. “She’s probably in her rooms anyway. Thanks, Ty Lee, for everything." 

"I didn't do anything," Ty Lee said, but he was already gone, following Mai and the other guards to the celebration. He would be late, but no one would care as long as the rice wine kept coming. 

Ty Lee went to Azula's room. It had been a long time since she had been there, not since they were very young and very new friends with each other. Azula had been proud of her bedroom—how neat she kept it, how fine the bed was, how lush and soft the pillows. But then, as they had gotten a little older, she had stopped. They had played mainly out of doors. They had played tricks on Zuko and Mai, and they had laughed. 

Ty Lee felt a twinge of guilt at that, and she looked over her shoulder. But Mai was past those times, and so should she. 

Ty Lee wondered if Azula was, or if the old patterns would pick up again. 

But the patterns hadn't started during their journeys, even though they almost had. Even though they had crossed so many paths and been to so many places. 

The door to Azula's room was closed, but there was a shaft of light, and a pacing shadow. Azula only ever paced if something was wrong, and something was almost always wrong. 

Ty Lee's heart sank as she watched the shadow circle over and over until it finally disappeared and the room flipped to darkness. There was a gentle rustle that was Azula climbed into bed. Ty Lee pushed herself from the wall. 

Her muscles ached from standing so still for so long, barely moving in case Azula sensed her, in case Azula heard her. She would be upset, Ty Lee thought, if she knew that Ty Lee were here, just waiting to make sure she was okay because Azula was always okay. 

Just another one of her lies. 

Ty Lee sat in front of the door so that people going in or out would have to go through her. And then, the next thing she knew, she was blinking sleep out of her eyes through a haze of lamplight. Azula gazed down at her, one hand resting against her hip. 

“What are you doing here?” Azula asked. “You should be sleeping in your own room, not on the floor.” 

Ty Lee flushed as she scrambled to her feet. She shouldn’t have fallen asleep—how could she? And to think that Azula should find her here, lingering like some kind of wanting, desperate thing. 

“You said no disturbances,” Ty Lee said, as if that would explain everything. As if that would explain the hurt at being left behind. 

"And yet here you are." Azula gestured grandly as if Ty Lee had brought an entire retinue of people with her. "What are you doing here? Afraid I'm going to run off again, and that you'll have to take me back kicking and screaming so that I'll behave myself? Did Zuko set you up to this?" 

Ty Lee gripped her Kyoshi kamino in her fists. Her mouth twisted. "I can't believe you, Azula. You still think that everything is about you!" Which didn't make sense considering Azula was the only reason she was here—but Ty Lee just shook her head. "After all this time, after everything, you just cast me aside—again! Like you did at the prison. Is this punishment?" She could feel her eyes fill with tears, and she wiped them away with her knuckles. "Because we left you at the South Pole? We had no choice, Azula! You were sick, and you weren't waking up no matter how many times we asked you to. What would you have us do! Just stay there while the New Ozai Society wreaked havoc?" She stepped closer to Azula, whose expression hadn't changed, as if she wasn't even really listening. "Do you even know how it felt when Mai said she had heard you plotting with her father? Do you know how for a moment, I thought that everything had been for nothing? But then you weren’t with them! You're with us, you're with Zuko, and you’re amazing and wonderful, and then you just leave again as if nothing mattered, as if I didn’t matter!” The tears came freely, and Ty Lee wiped them angrily away. Azula had no time for tears. She didn’t respect them. 

Azula said nothing, only stepped aside as she opened the door wider. “Feel free to make yourself comfortable.” 

Ty Lee stared at her for a moment, before taking advantage of the opportunity while it was still there. She went to the bed, and sat down. It was soft, and sank under her weight. But Azula didn't join her. She drifted towards the mirror on the other side of the room, looking into it as if she sought for something and not because she was vain—though Azula certainly could be vain if she wanted to. Ty Lee really did think she was the prettiest girl in the whole world, and Azula herself always made sure she looked perfect because she had to. 

But she didn't look perfect today. Her face was wan and pale. Her short hair was tangled and eschew—and Ty Lee couldn't help but wonder what had happened. Had someone done it to her, or had she done it to herself?  

It didn't matter. She was still the prettiest girl Ty Lee had ever known. 

“Why didn’t you wait for us in the South Pole?” Ty Lee finally asked, pulling Azula’s attention from the mirror back to her. "You didn't have to do it by yourself." 

"Yes, I did." Azula finally turned towards her, but her hands were clasped behind her back, and she stood rigid, as if at attention. "I've always had to do it by myself. There's nothing wrong with that. It means I'm strong." 

“We would have come back for you,” Ty Lee said. “We would have, I promise.” 

“Chief Hakoda said that Zuko’s life was in danger,” Azula said. “When I have ever sat and waited for anything?”  

Ty Lee twisted what coverlets remained on the bed with her fingers. “He shouldn’t have told you that.”  

“You know how difficult it is to refuse me when I want something. I can be very persuasive.” A shadow of the smile that Ty Lee had once known—had once adored, had once feared—flickered across her face, but then it was gone. 

An expanse of room separated them. Ty Lee jittered on the bed, wondering why Azula was standing so still, wondering why Azula had actually invited her in. 

 “You need to relax, Ty Lee,” Azula said when silence finally filled the distance between them. “It must have been very difficult for you, keeping watch over this terrible time. You should have gone to the celebration instead of following little old me. I know how much you enjoy such things.” 

Ty Lee could be less interested in the celebration, even though she could hear the last lingering remnants of it. Someone was drunkenly singing one of the country songs that she used to know by heart but had forgotten. “You could have sent a letter letting us know you were leaving the South Pole! You could have let us help you." 

Azula’s face hardened. Her voice snapped. “I did, but it was intercepted. I kept thinking, as I was traipsing halfway across the Earth Kingdom and the Fire Nation, why haven’t they come for me?" She started pacing, tapping her chin. "Why aren’t they afraid that I’ll do something horrible? Not that I was going to do anything, of course, but getting caught by the Avatar and Zuko was definitely part of my plan for getting here as quickly possible. But they never came, and eventually I found out the New Ozai Society was intercepting Zuko’s mail. What was I supposed to do? Send another letter letting them know I knew what they were up to just so I could assure everyone that I was actually on Zuko’s side?” She scowled scornfully. “No thank you.” 

“Oh.” Ty Lee’s voice was small. “I hadn’t known they were intercepting his letters.” 

Azula stretched, raising her hands towards the ceiling so that the sleeves of her red silk robe fell to her elbows. “Apparently, nobody knew. I fully intend on speaking to Zuko about it tomorrow. I’m sure it hardly matters now with the leader of the New Ozai Society in custody, but one can never be too careful.” She started to pace again. "You never know when someone is going to decide to carry on somebody else's work." 

“That’s a wonderful idea, Azula,” Ty Lee said. She tried to make her voice ring just as girlish as it had always been when she was with Azula—so deferential, so admiring. She tried to smile the same way too, but it felt wrong, as if it didn’t fit anymore, as if too many things had changed for anything to go back to the way they had been before. 

Silence fell between them again. 

“Why won’t you sit with me, Azula?” Ty Lee asked, patting to a spot next to her. “You are so far away. Are you angry with me, for leaving you?” But of course she would be. Azula valued loyalty—well, at least when it suited her. Leaving people behind wasn't loyalty, even though Azula could leave anybody behind whenever she wanted. But Azula never saw herself as the disloyal one. It was always somebody else. Ty Lee knew she should be angry at the unfairness of it, but instead she just hurt. 

Azula looked at the place beside Ty Lee and, slowly, crossed the distance between them. She sat down, gingerly, beside her. “I’m not angry with you,” Azula said. She took Ty Lee’s hands, and Ty Lee remained very still as she held them. It had been so long, and Ty Lee felt her throat swell with all the things she wanted to say, but she couldn’t think of the words.  

Slowly, Azula pulled off the green lined gloves that were part of Ty Lee's Kyoshi garb. She let them fall to the floor before cradling Ty Lee's hands in hers. Azula's hands were no longer soft as they once had been. Hard nubbed callouses had grown across her palm, and there was a thick one on her thumb that scraped against Ty Lee's skin.  

Ty Lee could barely breathe. Her heart fluttered somewhere in her throat. She felt she should say something, but what was there to say? For a brief moment, she remembered the fog and the memory it had shown her—when Azula had caressed her with her hand in her hair and then had pushed her away. But now her hands were rough, and Azula was leaning closer.  

"I’m sorry," Azula said. Her head was bent, staring at their held hands between them. 

Ty Lee could hardly believe what she had heard. “For what?” 

Azula kept her head bowed. “For everything. For being cruel to you, for bullying you, for scaring you, for risking your life, for forcing you to choose between me or Mai, for banishing you. I am sorry for all of it. It was wrong of me to do those things to you.” 

Ty Lee gently put her two fingers beneath Azula’s chin so that she could raise her gaze. Their eyes met. “You know I forgave you a long time ago? You know that right?” 

Azula nodded.  

Ty Lee smiled a little as she pulled a small square cloth from her pocket. “You’re crying,” she said.  

Azula daubed her cheek with her hand, as if she hadn't realized, and laughed a short, sharp laugh when she saw the tears smeared on her skin. She took the cloth from Ty Lee. “So are you,” Azula said, as she wiped Ty Lee's tears so gently from her cheeks. 

“But I always cry,” Ty Lee said. “You know that.” 

“I know.”  

They were apart again, but Ty Lee reached for her, clasping her in an embrace that was as tight as when she had seen Azula at the circus, when she thought, maybe, that Azula had come to actually see her, instead of to coerce her into joining her on some mission. Azula’s shoulders were so thin, but her skin smelled sweetly of cinnamon, and Ty Lee kept embracing her until she felt Azula return it. Azula’s hands were splayed wide across her back, and Ty Lee closed her eyes at her touch.  

Azula let her hands drop, and Ty Lee released her, but she kept her wrists relaxed on Azula's shoulders as she stared at her. The eye did not frighten her. Azula’s eyes did not frighten her at all.  

“I can’t stop looking at you,” Ty Lee said.  

“You should because I look terrible.” Azula's hands reached for her hair, tugging at the short ends of it, as if she could will it to grow faster and longer at her whim.  

Ty Lee cupped Azula’s hands in her palms. “I think you look just as lovely as you always have.” 

Azula rolled her eyes, her gaze shifting away. “You don’t have to flatter me anymore. That’s one of the things I was apologizing for, though maybe I should have said so more clearly than I did.”  

“I wasn’t,” Ty Lee said. “I was being serious. I think you're beautiful.” And then she leaned forward to do something she had never dared do before, because she knew that Azula would never allow it, that Azula would use it against her even more cruelly than she used their friendship. Ty Lee kissed her softly, briefly on the mouth. She pulled away, and put her hand again to Azula's cheek. “I’ve always thought that you were beautiful.”  

Azula’s attention snapped back to Ty Lee. “What are you doing?” 

“Mai told me that I shouldn’t come because I was half in love with you,” Ty Lee said. “But she was wrong because I've never been half in love with you. I think I’ve loved you for the longest time, even though I knew I shouldn’t. Even though I knew you would only hurt me. But I don’t think you’re like that anymore, and if you were, I don’t think I’d care. I'd love you anyway.”  

Azula’s eyes closed. “Ty Lee,” she said. She pulled Ty Lee’s hands from her face, holding them gently.  

“What is it?” Ty Lee asked. “What’s wrong?”  

“I don’t know. I’m a little surprised, I suppose. I hadn’t realized. Or maybe I did. I don’t know." 

Ty Lee withdrew from her, her hands sliding from Azula’s light touch. “That’s okay. I just wanted you to know, in case you decided to disappear again—in case, for whatever reason, I never got to see you again.” 

“I’m not going anywhere, Ty Lee. I’m just glad to be home, after all this time. And I’m glad that you’re here instead of on Kyoshi Island. I don’t think I would have been welcome there if I had wanted to visit you.” 

Ty Lee forced herself to smile, to laugh and say probably so—because it wasn’t as if Azula were lying.  

But Ty Lee had wanted—something. Something more from Azula, and it was easy to think that maybe she was holding back, like she was afraid or guilty. But she couldn’t think like that. She had fantasized enough when Azula was unreachable, and untouchable. 

It was time to be reasonable, to talk about this—when they were both ready.  

Azula yawned, and Ty Lee made to rise. “Would you like me to go now?”  

“You can do as you like,” Azula said. “I am not going to stop you.”  

Ty Lee wondered what that meant. 

Azula sighed. “It would be a shame for you to go back to your post at my door. The floor is so uncomfortable—I would know, I’ve slept on it often enough. Did you know that the only reason I woke up to find you sitting there all alone was because I had woken up on the floor? Almost as if this bed was just too soft, something to be rejected.” She smoothed her hands over the broad expanse of the mattress, of the coverlets. “I see no reason why a bed such as this should be ignored in favor of the floor. Perhaps you would prefer to sleep here for the remainder of the night?”  

Ty Lee blinked at her, wondering if Azula was trying to—what? Flirt with her? Or was she just offering something she thought would be more comfortable? Then she shook her head, smiling. She had made her intentions clear. If Azula wanted to play around it—well, that would be very much in Azula’s nature. “Will you be sleeping on the bed too?” 

“Until I inevitably find my way back to the floor,” Azula said, her brow arching. But then she looked uncertain, questioning. “Is that alright?” 

Ty Lee wanted to remind Azula that this was her bed, but she didn’t. “Yes, it is.” 

They positioned themselves, side by side. They didn't speak, though Ty Lee had so many questions. She wanted to know if Azula had found Ursa, if she was still unable to firebend, what would happen the next morning when they woke—but she didn’t say anything. There was a space between them, something that grew smaller and smaller as time passed, as their hands found each other, and they held each other, until sleep came for them both. 

When Ty Lee woke with the sun shining brightly through the windows, she thought she was alone as Azula was no longer a warm presence beside her. She tried to tell herself that it was nothing, that she didn’t care, but just as she was about to leap out of bed to find her, she found Azula just where she said she’d be—there, on the floor, sleeping soundly.  

Ty Lee took a moment to smile at her fondly before gently nudging her shoulder with her bare foot. “Wake up, sleepyhead. Weren’t you always telling me that firebenders rose with the sun? Well, the sun is already risen and leaving you behind.” 

Azula’s eyes fluttered open as she rose to a sitting position. “That might make sense if I were still a bender. But now, I can sleep in on this luxurious carpet.” 

“Oh,” Ty Lee said. She wondered if she were sad, or if she was secretly hoping that Azula would not regain her firebending, if she would be a nonbender just like her. What if the fire made her mean again?  

Azula looked at her strangely. “Don’t look so sad on my account. It’s nothing. It’s been a year that I’ve been without it. I’ve moved on.”  

“Azula—“ Ty Lee reached for her, but Azula moved away.  

“I need to speak with Firelord Zuko,” Azula said. “I had meant to go to him sooner but apparently I slept instead.” 

“You needed the rest,” Ty Lee said. 

Azula’s eyes hardened. “I don’t need rest. I need to speak with Zuko.” She ran her fingers through her hair and scowled at her reflection in the mirror. 

“Alright,” Ty Lee said. “May I join you later?” 

Azula smiled at her—a smile that Ty Lee hadn’t seen before. It looked gentle on her. “You may join me whenever you like, Ty Lee. Just—not for this meeting as I would like to speak with him in private. I’m sure you understand.” 

Ty Lee laughed as Azula looked at her so long it almost turned to awkwardness. Then she shook herself and disappeared through the door, closing it gently behind her. Ty Lee laid back down, sprawled across the entire length of Azula’s bed, and put her hand to her mouth as she smiled. 


	18. Avatar Talk

Azula stopped in the grand room where the portraits of the previous Firelords hung. They were as grand as she remembered. She stopped beneath the one of her father, her neck craned back so she could see his face. He was not smiling, as none of his other predecessors had. 

Zuko, despite being Firelord for nearly a year, hadn't had one painted of him yet. She remembered what she had told him: make sure they capture your good side. Good advice for anyone, she figured, but she had meant it meanly.  

She reached out to touch the painting of her father. It felt rich and soft and she closed her eyes. The thoughts she had been refusing to acknowledge pressed around her again. Ty Lee had forgiven her. Ty Lee believed there was something more than friendship between them.  

Azula's eyes snapped open and she found her father's unmoving face. She could smell the tea again. She could see the steam twisting between her father and her mother as he had leaned over the space between them and touched her. 

Azula covered her eyes with her hands, and forced herself to take a deep breath, forced herself to turn away from the portrait and to find Zuko before he got caught up in the day-to-day affairs of whatever it was he did as Firelord. But, even as she hastened down the halls, Azula could not stop thinking about Ty Lee. Even now, Azula could feel the distance between them widening as doubts and questions formed like vapor and then disappeared.  

In some ways she was repulsed, and yet she wanted to go back to Ty Lee too. She wanted it to work because it could be different for them. It could be, it had to be.  

She forced herself to focus as she approached Zuko's room. The door was open, and she peeked inside. The room was empty, and she rolled her eyes at the prospect of actually having to look for him. He could be anywhere, and though it was true she did have all day to find him, she didn't want to spend the time doing it. 

The satchel she had given him was empty on his desk. The letters were unbound and opened, neatly laid out. He had read them. She approached slowly. She wondered if he'd cried. 

The papers were so thin they rustled as she approached. Her hands reached for them, but then she turned aside. 

She shouldn’t be here. There was no place for her here.  

Without looking further, she rushed from his chambers. She went to the throne room, but he was not there either. 

Azula supposed that she could have asked the guards where he was, where he was hiding, but it was also nice wandering the palace. Her hands trailed along the walls. It was nice being home again. 

How she had missed this place. 

Eventually, she neared the exit to the gardens, and she finally saw him. He was with the Avatar while Mai and Katara watched them from one of the stone benches underneath a mimosa tree. Green shadow dappled their skin, and Mai was almost smiling as she spoke softly to Katara.  

Zuko and the Avatar were doing some kind of exercise, and Azula started when she recognized some of the forms. Zuko had used the same techniques against her after he had joined the Avatar. She watched them more closely. It did not look like the form was meant to be combative, but rather something else, something different. 

It was so warm that both the Avatar and Zuko were bare chested, and she could see the scars her lightning had left on them both. Something sickened in her, and her eyes closed as she pressed her head against the stone wall. It was cool against the heat, and she focused on that. There was no time for guilt. It had happened. She had done it. The only thing she could do now was move forward from it, and to be glad that Katara had been there to heal them both.  

For a moment longer she watched from the shadows, feeling like the same small child who had seen everything from behind the curtains. It was so strange to see Zuko surrounded by friends. She didn't remember him having any when he was growing up. He only ever had Mom, and then Uncle.  

She frowned. Something negative and sharp dug at her. It wasn't fair, she thought. But they had not always been his friends. Some of them had been his enemies. Things changed. They would for her too. She forced herself to step forward into the sunlight, to come out to the very edge of the garden where stone turned to lush foliage. She watched them openly with her arms folded across her chest. 

They noticed her in a few moments, and they stopped what they were doing. 

“Oh, it’s you,” Mai said, immediately rising from the bench like Azula was some kind of threat.  

Katara had fallen silent, but her eyes were keen. Azula noticed the water she kept strapped to her side. 

Zuko and the Avatar looked over their shoulders. “Azula,” Zuko said. “I went to find you but you were sleeping.” 

The Avatar bowed to her as he wished her a good morning. He was the very image of respect. Azula looked at him a moment, wondering how he could be so polite towards her. There was no need for it, even if they hadn't been enemies for so long. What did he want from her? 

“One does tend to sleep after a long journey,” Azula said. She nodded slightly to the others. 

Mai looked at her stiffly. “Thank you for your help in apprehending my father.” 

“It was my pleasure,” Azula said. “If you don’t mind, everyone, I would like to speak with my brother alone. Don’t worry, I’m not going to try anything.”  

Zuko nodded, and Mai looked at her again before taking her leave, Katara close beside her. The Avatar called back, hands to his mouth, "I'll see you later!" 

“Mai is cheerful as ever I see,” Azula said, as she watched them disappear. The Avatar seemed relentlessly cheerful too, but that seemed normal for him. “You’d think that she’d be happier, all things considered.” 

“Her father is in jail for treason, Azula,” Zuko said. “Give her a break.” 

“Our father is in jail for war crimes against the Earth Kingdom but you don’t see us being gloomy about it. Besides, Mai’s father wasn’t a good father, as far as fathers go at least. She should be glad it turned out this way. After all, some people never get what they deserve.” 

Zuko sighed. 

“What?” Azula said. “I didn’t say anything mean.” 

“I know.” Zuko looked around and then he gestured towards the turtle-duck pond. “Sit with me, for a moment." 

Azula bowed, a little deeper than necessary to be absolutely respectful. “As the Firelord commands.” She dropped a wink to let him know that she wasn’t being bitter, that she was just teasing.  

As they neared the pond, the turtle-ducks fled from their shadows, clustering towards the farther end of the water. Azula wondered if they remembered her, even though she did not know why they would. She'd been gone for a year. But the turtle-ducks always ran from. They knew what she offered them. 

They settled themselves in the prickly grass, and Azula stared moodily at the ducks. Tapping her shoulder, Zuko handed her a crust of bread. He had another for himself. Rolling her eyes, she took it from him. 

“Where did you find our mother?” he said. He tossed a nibble of bread to one of the ducks, and they dove into the water after it.  

Azula, who hadn't had breakfast yet, took a bite of her own bread. It was a little stale, but it still tasted good. “In a cave. She was trying to reach you, if that makes you feel better. But apparently Father heard about it and he sent an assassin after her—a combustion bender, by the look of the rubble. She crawled into a cave for shelter and the whole thing was blown shut on top of her.” Azula turned her face away.  

“How do you know she was trying to find me?” Zuko said. 

“If I told you,” Azula said, “you’d say I was crazy.” 

He looked at her as if she’d slapped him. “You know I wouldn’t say that.” 

He had before though, just like his Uncle. Azula smoothed her clothes against her knees. Bread crumbs fell into the grass. “I don’t know what’d you say. But if you must know, I'd see her sometimes. We spoke together, even though I knew it wasn't really her. She told me she was looking to join you in one of these hallucinations. But I’m sure it’s true. She loved you. When you were banished too, it was only natural she'd join you, just like it was only natural that he'd kill her for doing so. I think he always regretted not killing her for what she did to Grandfather Azulon. Maybe he still loved her in some way, and that’s why he didn’t. But after three years of absence—well, anything can die if it’s not properly tended to. Or he just realized he loved himself more.” She shrugged. 

“I feel like I still don’t know what happened that night,” Zuko said. He pinched the bridge of his nose and scowled.  

“I remember that night, perfectly,” Azula said. “And there’s really not much to say. Father was going to kill you, Mother said that she’d kill Grandfather Azulon to put him on the throne. Then he banished her because someone needed to pay the price. And then he couldn’t risk her returning for so many reasons. I bet if you were to ask him, he’d be more than willing to explain each one. Or you could just take my word for it and realize that if she came back, then she could tell the whole world his position as Firelord was a complete lie. That if she came back, you’d realize that you didn’t need him anymore, as if you ever did.” 

"I suppose that makes sense." Zuko kept tossing bread so that the ducks would have to swim closer to them to eat it. Even now they were nearly halfway across the pond. 

Azula leaned back against the grass, closing her eyes against the hot sun. “I have something to tell you, Zuko. I visited Father very early on—before I asked you to let me go so we could find out what happened to our mother. He was angry at me for losing my firebending—I could only imagine him now, one year and a journey in the spirit world later, and still no bending!” She stopped to laugh, bitterly, and then silenced herself. There was no need to be dramatic. “So he told me to restore it so I could free him from his prison. And that's why I told you I wanted to restore my honor.” She opened one eye, and glanced at him. “It was very foolish of you to let me go, Zuzu.” 

He shoved her gently with his bare feet. “I don’t regret the decision, and I’d make it again. And as far as I can tell, it was the right decision.”  

Her throat swelled as she looked at him again, eyes catching sight of the scar. Then she looked away. “Did you read the letters I brought you?” 

“I did,” he said. “I am—very glad to have had the opportunity to do that. Thank you, Azula, for bringing them to me. And her hairpiece, as well. That was kind of you. I’m surprised you’re not wearing it, actually.” 

“She didn’t leave anything for me,” Azula said. “Why would I wear it?” 

Zuko stretched beside her, propping himself on an elbow. “What do you mean she didn’t leave anything for you?” 

“Exactly what I said,” Azula said, feeling snappish. It hurt that Mom hadn’t written her—of course it hurt. The conversations she had had with Ursa were words she wished had been spoken between them—not something that had actually happened. “You should save the hairpiece for Mai. I'm sure she would look very pretty in it. And she would be flattered that you would give her something so special. She might even smile.”  

They sat like that in silence for a while, soaking in the sun. Azula could not remember the last time she had been at rest, when she had not been struggling to go from one place to another, to find new ways to make Ozai smile at her, to be proud of her. Here, there was only the grass and the sun and Zuko's company. Her eyes grew heavy, and she was almost asleep before Zuko interrupted her. 

“I think that I might have something for you.”  

Azula opened her eye, squeezing the other tight against the glare of the sun. “Is it something of Mom’s because if it is, I don’t want it.” 

“No, it’s something from our Great-Grandfather,” Zuko said.  

Azula scoffed and closed her eye again. “Then I want it even less. I am sure that Sozin was just as hateful a man as Ozai and Azulon. Why would I want anything of his?”  

“Our other great-grandfather,” Zuko said. 

Azula heard him climbing to his feet, and then his shadow fell over her.  

“Come on,” he said. “Come with me.” 

She saw that he was holding his hand out for her. After a few moments’ hesitation, she gripped his hand, and he helped haul her to her feet. Of course she was aware that Avatar Roku was her other great-grandfather. It wasn’t something she'd been particularly proud of at the time. Still, she listened when Zuko told her in detail the story of their friendship and Sozin’s subsequent betrayal and murder.  

“I never knew this before,” he said, as he entered his room with Azula behind him. “I think Uncle Iroh wanted me to find out because he gave me this.”  

He opened a drawer and took out another ceremonial hairpiece, something that Azula had not seen for a long time, and even then, it had only been a painting in a history book. Many people thought the piece had been lost forever. She remembered Ozai being upset at its absence. “But that’s what the crown prince is supposed to wear,” Azula said.  

Zuko nodded. “Sozin had given it to Ruko when he had to leave his earthly possessions behind. It’s a symbol of their friendship, and how it failed because of Sozin’s greed and hate. I think about that sometimes—you know, how he killed Roku on the volcano, and then tried to kill him again by wiping out the air nomads. And how we carried that in our family—in our grandfather, our father, even in us.”  

Azula folded her arms tightly across her belly. She had almost succeeded. She had almost fulfilled Sozin’s last and dying wish—that his friend, his best friend, be killed in the Avatar state so that he would never come back again.  

“I’ll never forget what Uncle Iroh said to me when I confronted him about this. I was so upset, and so angry, and so lost. But he said that evil and good are always at war inside me. That it's my nature, my legacy. That I could resolve what had happened in the past because the Avatar and the Firelord were my family, and that the ability to restore balance was born in me. That's when he gave me this.” He looked at her as he held the hairpiece. “Do you remember? You said something similar to me, even though you were just trying to manipulate me into letting you go. But you were right, more right than you could have ever realized, and Uncle Iroh was wrong, because you do share this legacy, you do share this struggle. I’m not the only one who can restore the honor the Fire Nation, and I don’t want to be. I don’t have to do this alone, just like you don’t have to.”  

Azula stared at the piece as it rested in the hollow of Zuko's hand. "Sometimes, when I was wandering in the spirit world, I would think about coming back and standing beside you instead of against you. I thought about how we balanced each other out—our strengths and our weaknesses. Of course, I didn’t necessarily have Roku and Sozin in mind at the time, but I suppose it’s an apt comparison.” 

Zuko smiled at her and he moved to stand behind her. She stepped aside but he said, "No, stay still. Please." 

She did as he asked, and shivered when she felt his hands in her hair. 

“I think your hair is shorter than mine when we met in Ba Sing Se,” he said.  

She rolled her eyes. “Your hair was out of control in Ba Sing Se.” 

“There,” he said, as he finished with whatever he was doing. He put his hands on her shoulders and guided her towards the mirror in his room.  

He had put her hair in a top-knot, secured with the hairpiece. With Roku’s hairpiece. “I shouldn’t wear this,” she said.  

She went to remove it, but paused when he asked, "Why not?" 

“Because I tried to kill the Avatar, dum-dum, and if you ask anyone who was there, I practically succeeded. He has the scar to prove it.” She walked away from him. “And then I gave you a scar to match his. The only legacy that I've carried out is Sozin’s. Not Roku's.” 

“Well, that was Sozin’s before it was Roku’s,” Zuko said.  

“Don’t try to make me laugh! It’s not funny, it’s not okay to laugh.” She looked at her empty hands. Her skin was cold and clammy. They had not shot fire or lightning for a long time. It was the price she paid for what she had done, and she did not believe her bending would ever be restored because the price could never be repaid.  

“Azula, I’ve forgiven you—I forgave you when I saw you chained to that grate,” Zuko said. “I knew when I challenged you that something was wrong. If I could do it again—I don’t think I'd fight you. I should have tried to find another way. You weren't well, and though that doesn’t excuse you cheating and trying to kill Katara and almost killing me—I know that you deserve a second chance, just like I did. I know that you were lost and I know that you made mistakes and I know that you can choose to do good because we can all do that." He fell silent. His hair fell over his eyes like a curtain. His voice was soft and breaking. "Don't you remember that I was with you when you tried to kill Aang? You may have been the one that struck the killing blow—but I chose the same as you did, Azula. And then I tried to cover it up and sent an assassin after them. I’m not blameless in what happened either—and I never will be, and that’s something that I have to live with too. That we both have to live with.”  

Azula was silent for a moment. “You really need to work on your pep talks.”  

“You’re not the first one who’s told me that.” Zuko put his hand on her shoulder. “Keep it, please. I can think of no one it would suit better.”  

Azula looked at herself in the mirror again, observed the way the flames rose on either side of her topknot. Imagined how it must have looked on Sozin, and then on Roku. Her face looked wan and pale in the reflection, and she couldn't stop herself from looking for Ursa to appear in the background—but she didn't come. Perhaps she would be pleased with the new way she wore her hair. Or perhaps she would be hurt that her daughter wouldn't wear the one thing that could have been hers. Or maybe none of that mattered anymore. 

“Alright,” Azula said, finally relenting. “I’ll keep it. But only because you’re insisting so hard. I would hate to disappoint the Firelord.” 

"I don't know about that," Zuko said. “Come on, there’s one other thing I want to show you.” 

He walked out of his room, and led her back to the garden. “Are you saying, Zuko, that you made me leave my very comfortable spot on the grass, to walk all the way to your room, and then all the way back to the very same place we left? Do you have any idea how exhausted I am from walking?” 

“I might have a vague idea,” Zuko said. “But I think you’ll like this.” He stood standing, with one knee bent and raised, arms outstretched. “Mirror me,” he said. 

Azula did so. And then he adopted another pose, and then another. They were the same ones that he and the Avatar had been practicing earlier. “I recognize these forms,” Azula said. “I wondered where you had learned them—it wasn’t something I recognized, and honestly, I thought I had taught you everything you know.”  

Zuko laughed. “Not quite. This is a firebending form called the Dancing Dragon. I learned this after I left to rejoin the Avatar. Aang and I actually learned it together.” 

“Did it help your bending?” Azula asked, though she didn’t quite see how it could. It wasn’t like the other firebending forms she had ever learned. 

“It did,” Zuko said. “It made me understand that I didn't understand fire at all. It’s not just consumption and destruction. It’s life. It’s warmth. It’s comfort. It doesn’t have to be fueled by hate and rage and shame. There’s another way, a better way. Fire is love and kindness too.” 

Azula rolled her eyes even as she listened carefully. She was never a huge fan of this mushy stuff, but it reminded her of what her mother had kept telling her, when she was physically there and in her imaginations. Love, kindness, trust.  

“You have the steps memorized?” Zuko asked after he had run it through with her several times.  

“Of course, I have them memorized,” she replied. “They weren’t that difficult.” 

“It’s best for two people to do this together. We start side by side, and then you lean right, and I’ll lean left so that we travel in a circle. If we do it right, if we do it in sync, we’ll end together, with our hands nearly touching.”  

“And how am I supposed to make sure I’m keeping pace with you if our backs are turned?” This was definitely more Ty Lee’s thing, Azula realized. She worked together with people all the time, trusting they would be there to catch her when she fell, and them trusting her that she would also be there for them. Azula had always done her routines alone. Even when she had been teaching Zuko so long ago, they were always forms that could be done alone. “We’ve never exactly been a cohesive sibling unit—I don’t see how that can change in one single afternoon.” 

“I guess you’ll just have to trust that we can do it. And if we do end up off center—then we have a lot of time to practice,” Zuko said. “Come on. Let’s try.” 

Azula sighed, and took up the first position alongside Zuko. Then she moved to the next form in the sequence, and then the next. They washed through her, like water, and she closed her eyes as she listened for the soft pressure of Zuko’s footsteps, for the gentle sound of his breathing.  

And then the dance was finished, and she opened her eyes to see Zuko facing her. Their hands were raised, forming an arch between them, their fists nearly touching at the knuckles.  

Zuko was looking at her from under the fringe of his hair, and he was grinning at her, as if he were delighted to be here with her, in this moment. “I told you so,” he whispered softly. 

And Azula, after only a few moments, smiled back. 

_THE END_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd like to thank all of you who read and all of you who commented. Thank you also for your patience with my typos. Maybe next time I'll ask someone to beta for me. ;) Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed the story and thanks again!


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